This page provides readers
access to examples of the capital confluence of the promiscuous,
prohibited, perplexing and political. This is nothing new. For
example, during the Civil War there were 450 brothels in DC.
Neither, however, is it insignificant. Part of the mythology
of Washington is what might be called the Jim Lehrer Illusion,
which is to say that all people in the capital do is sit around
and rationally debate policy alternatives. In fact, Washington
politics is also heavily driven by cowardice, blackmail, deceit,
fear, loyalty to old buddies and even older bodies, cooptation,
corruption, sex, and just plain crime. Journalists who pretend
otherwise either don't understand what is going on or are covering
for someone.

The public often misunderstands
the importance of Washington scandals, assuming them to be a
simple dalliance, individual failing, or private offense. What
makes both sex and crime in DC different, at least when those
in power are involved, is that there is far more opportunity
for blackmail and far more skill at covering things up.

The blackmail may be
used by members of one branch of government against those of
another, by lobbyists against members of Congress, by the police
against whomever they wish, and by foreign powers. For example,
one way to keep a congress member bought is for a lobbyist to
provide him with high class prostitutes. And it is noteworthy
that both the Israelis and Boris Yeltsin apparently knew about
Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky before the American
public did. The city's ecology lends particular importance to
gay sex simply because greater public antipathy makes it an even
easier target for the blackmailer, witness the case a few years
back when DC police officers were found to be running an extortion
racket against those who visited gay bars.

Finally, the exposure
of impropriety almost inevitably raises the issue of hypocrisy
since the participating official often has inveighed against
the discovered offense or attempted to ban, punish, or otherwise
suppress the revealed practice. One of the more ironic examples
was when, during the 1960s, a white southern senator was caught
with a black prostitute. Said a civil rights leader, "Oh
he's just one of those sunup to sundown segregationists."
Washington is full of sunup to sundown moralists.

The ability to cover
up scandal or crime is also much greater in Washington. This
may be accomplished by relying on the social club rules of the
federal city, through the aid of acquiescent journalists, by
official spin or censorship, or by resort to the capital's various
law enforcement agencies, each one beholden for budget and top
appointments to some federal department. For example, both the
Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney(who handles all DC crimes)
are appointed by the president. The FBI, DEA, ATF, National Park
police, the Secret Service, not to mention the Aqueduct, Zoo,
and Metro police, all work for the president. And the Metropolitan
Police Department is under the thumb of Congress, which approves
its budget and exercises behind-the-scenes authority.

In short, there is far
more politically related sex and crime in Washington then is
generally reported, it is less competently investigated than
is generally thought, and it is far easier to cover up than is
generally appreciated.

RELIABLE SOURCE, WASH POST New stop on D.C.'s sex scandal tour: Room 871 at
the Mayflower. The 83-year-old hotel has a long and storied history
of fat-cat partying and other Washington excesses, but it never
made headlines for horizontal high jinks until "Client 9"
. . . There hasn't been this much excitement since 1999, when
Monica Lewinsky fought her way through throngs to (appropriately
enough) the presidential suite, where she recounted her affair
with Bill Clinton to congressional impeachment managers. The
Mayflower was also Judith Campbell Exner's home away from home
when she trysted with John F. Kennedy at the White House. And
yes, history buffs, it was the hotel's Town & Country lounge
where FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover lunched daily for 20 years
alongside his live-in aide, Clyde Tolson.

The Mayflower now joins the list of Washington's
greatest bed-and-breakfasts: The Jefferson, where Clinton confidant
Dick Morris sucked the toes of $200-an-hour call girl Sherry
Rowlands; the former Vista (now Westin Washington) where Marion
Barry was caught smoking crack as gal-pal Rasheeda Moore looked
on; and the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, where Marv Albert bit
the back of a female companion, Linda Tripp secretly taped Lewinsky
talking about her affair, and Deborah Jeane Palfrey (a.k.a. the
D.C. Madam) sent escorts for what she calls legal, non-sexual
"dates."

NY TIMES
- "I think biologists could tell you this has something
to do with natural selection - the person who acquires power
becomes the alpha male," said Tom Fiedler, who teaches a
course in press and politics at Harvard's Kennedy School. He
was involved in reporting Gary Hart's notorious fling with Donna
Rice in 1987 that terminated the senator's presidential bid.
. .

Dr. Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple
University, said that many politicians are what he calls Type
T personalities, with T standing for thrill-seeking. "Politics
is an uncertain business," he said. "You're at the
whim of the electorate. There's no tenure. It's often hard to
know what the criteria for success are. It's either all or nothing
- you either win or you lose. And so it inspires a risk-taking
person to go into that line of work. But on the public side,
they're supposed to show stability and responsibility, and so
this risky nature may show itself more on the private side.".
. .

Dr. Judy Kuriansky, an adjunct professor
of clinical psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College,
said that "sex and power are extremely connected, because
they're basically an expression of this huge energy that these
people have." Not uncommonly, she said, politicians speak
out vigorously against the very behavior that they then indulge
in, as is the case with Governor Spitzer. "You project wrong
onto others that is symptomatic of your own behavior," she
said. "It's called a defense mechanism. Basically, it's
unconscious." Moreover, she added, "Even though Spitzer
is a lawyer, when you get into a position of power, you think
you're above the law."

THE DRUNKS ON THE HILL

ALBERT EISELE AND JEFF DUFOUR, HILL NEWS - When retiring Sen. Fritz Hollings
(D-S.C.) marked the end of his 38 years in the Senate on Nov.
16, he paid lavish tribute to his current colleagues but raised
some doubts about the first group of senators he served with,
in 1966. "I don't leave with the idea that the Senate is
not what it used to be in the sense of personnel," he said
in his farewell speech. "We have a way better group of senators.
We had five drunks or six drunks when I came here. There is nobody
drunk in the United States Senate [today]."

Hollings's remarks caused
former senators and Senate aides and journalists who covered
the Senate at the time to speculate on just whom he was referring
to. "There were two or three places senators could go to
get a free drink, including the secretary of the Senate's office,"
recalled former Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.).

McCarthy, who came to the
Senate from the House in 1959, identified Russell Long (D-La.),
Thurston Morton (R-Ky.), Warren Magnuson (D-Wash.), James Eastland
(D-Miss.), Harrison Williams (D-N.J.) and Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.)
as among those Hollings might have had in mind.

He said Long and Morton,
who acquired the nickname "Thirsty," often drank together,
while Magnuson "sometimes came on the floor and was kind
of vague as to where he was, and somebody said, 'He walks from
memory.'"

THE MAFIA
AND DC

The New York Mafia has
never been strong in DC. There have been several explanations
for this. One is that DC was long too small a town to bother
with. There are also unconfirmed reports that J Edgar Hoover
struck some sort of deal with the Mafia to keep it out. William
Garber, an attorney who represented several local crime figures,
told a Washington Post reporter in the 1980s that "organized
crime thought moving [into Washington] would just be pushing
the FBI too far."

On the other hand an investigative
reporter, who moved to Washington after learning of a mob contract
on his life in the 1970s tells us a different story. He said
that federal agents suggested that he move to a neutral town
- one in which the mobs shared turf with none of them dominant.
They suggested Las Vegas, Miami and Washington.

JOE
NESLINE & NATHAN LANDOW

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, March 30, 1998: When Kathleen Willey dropped Nathan
Landow's name into her amended deposition for the Paula Jones
case in February, shudders went through Vice President Al Gore's
camp - and not just because Willey had presented a credible account
of hormones run amok in the Oval Office. For more than a decade,
Landow, a 65-year-old multimillionaire Maryland developer, has
served as Gore's most enthusiastic fund-raiser. . . In Willey's
original January 11 deposition in the Jones case, she denied
that anyone had tried to influence her deposition, and Landow's
name never came up. But a month later, in a written revision,
Willey noted that she had "discussed" her deposition
with Landow. In subsequent testimony before Starr's grand jury,
Willey has reportedly alleged that Landow tried to pressure her
into recanting her story of sexual harassment at the hands of
President Clinton. Through his lawyers, Landow has issued a vociferous
denial that he made any attempt to influence Willey's testimony.
But sources close to Landow acknowledge that in October, weeks
after Willey received a subpoena in the Jones case, Landow paid
a private charter company to fly her--at her request--to his
oceanside Maryland estate. According to Landow's lawyer Joe Caldwell
Jr., "The contact between Mr. Landow and Ms. Willey last
fall was initiated by Ms. Willey." . . . Over the past two
decades, Landow has received more than his share of dings. A
fund-raiser for Jimmy Carter, Landow was being considered for
an ambassadorship to the Netherlands in 1977. But in January
1978, the Washington Post published a story linking Landow with
Joe Nesline, a known associate of organized crime figures. The
disclosure appeared to scuttle Landow's ambassadorial aspirations,
but not his party influence.

WASHINGTON POST, January
26, 1978: Two prominent Washington investors [Nathan Landow and
Smith Bagley] with connections to the Carter administration were
involved in a proposal to build a hotel and gambling casino in
Atlantic City, with Washington gambling kingpin Joe Nesline as
a consultant. Nesline's involvement with the casino venture became
known Jan 14 when federal and local police raided Nesline's Bethesda
apartment. . . FBI agents seized a file containing and memoranda
spelling out a proposed $85 million deal involving Bagley and
Landow... [It] was not the only gambling venture in which Nesline
had been involved with Landow... Involved in the St. Marten venture
were Landow and Edward Cellini, a brother of Dino Cellini, a
former associate of organized crime figure Meyer Lansky... In
November... [t]he party at [the] Landow home was observed by
Montgomery County plainclothesmen, who took down license plate
numbers of guests' cars. Officers of the county's organized crime
section have had Landow under surveillance for nearly a year.
They learned from Florida police that Landow had an interest
in a now defunct corporation whose concealed owners allegedly
included an identified member of the Carlo Gambino Mafia "family."
Secret Service agents who were at the party to protect the president's
son, questioned the Montgomery County plainclothesmen who explained
their interest in Landow.

WASHINGTON POST, JANUARY
28, 1978: Smith Bagley, a prominent Washington investor with
ties to the Carter administration, has accused The Washington
Post of bias and unethical conduct in its coverage of an Atlantic
City hotel casino proposal in which Bagley had participated .
. . "Ever since Maxine Cheshire asked me for a $25,000 personal
loan and I turned her down," Bagley asserted, "I have
felt my family and I have been under a magnifying glass with
Washington Post eyes looking through it." Cheshire has denied
that such a loan was ever discussed. . . . Bradlee, Cheshire
and assistant managing editor Harry M. Rosenfeld, who edited
Cheshire's story, all disputed Bagley's allegations yesterday
. . . Bagley, a Reynolds tobacco heir, was quoted as denying
he had ever met or "heard of" Nesline. Landow, a multimillionaire
builder, acknowledged knowing Nesline. Bagley could not be reached
for further comment yesterday. One of his lawyers, Irvin B. Nathan,
declined to comment. The accuracy of The Post's account has not
been disputed.

WASHINGTON POST, April
6, 1998: In 1978, The Washington Post printed a front-page story
revealing that Landow had hired Joe Nesline, a Washington illegal-gambling
kingpin, as a consultant in an unsuccessful effort to build a
casino in Atlantic City. At the time, Landow admitted that Nesline
was a friend but denied knowing about his friend's criminal past.
Now Landow says, "There were a lot of inaccuracies in that
article."

MALE PROSTITUTION IN THE REAGAN-BUSH ERA

PAUL M. RODRIGUEZ AND GEORGE
ARCHIBALD WASHINGTON TIMES, 1989: A homosexual prostitution ring
is under investigation by federal and District authorities and
includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush
administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S.
and foreign businessmen with close social ties to Washington's
political elite, documents obtained by The Washington Times reveal.
One of the ring's high-profile clients was so well-connected,
in fact, that he could arrange a middle-of-the-night tour of
the White House for his friends on Sunday, July 3, of last year.
Among the six persons on the extraordinary 1 a.m. tour were two
male prostitutes . . . Reporters for this newspaper examined
hundreds of credit-card vouchers, drawn on both corporate and
personal cards and made payable to the escort service operated
by the homosexual ring . . . Among the client names contained
in the vouchers - and identified by prostitutes and escort operators
- are government officials, locally based U.S. military officers,
businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides and other
professionals . . .

KARLYN BARKER, WASHINGTON
POST, JULY 24, 1990: The alleged leader of what authorities have
called the largest male prostitution operation in the Washington
area surrendered to federal agents yesterday and pleaded not
guilty to racketeering charges that have been filed against him
and three alleged accomplices. Henry W. Vinson, 29, of Williamson,
W.Va., a coal miner's son accused of setting up the homosexual
escort service, was arraigned in U.S. District Court here yesterday
afternoon after turning himself in to Secret Service agents .
. . At a news conference after the arraignment, [U.S. Attorney
Jay] Stephens said the investigation into the alleged prostitution
ring "is concluded" and that the indictment, which
was unsealed yesterday, focused on those who allegedly set up
the ring rather than on clients who reportedly patronized it.
Asked about earlier reports that some of those clients included
high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush administrations,
Stephens said the investigation had not revealed "additional
conduct which suggests criminal conduct on behalf of other people."
. . . The Vinson case provoked additional notice after The Washington
Times published reports last summer suggesting that the alleged
prostitution ring had been patronized by government officials.
The Times named as clients several low-level government employees
and Craig J. Spence, a Washington lobbyist and party-giver who,
the paper said, took friends and prostitutes on late-night tours
of the White House. Spence was found dead in a Boston hotel room
last fall, and authorities ruled his death a suicide.

TIMOTHY
MAIER, INSIGHT, Oct. 20, 1997: Blackmail, lies and deceit may
be the only fitting description of the 1993 Seattle Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation, or APEC, summit where dignitaries from
17 countries are reported to have been placed under electronic
surveillance by American agents. As Insight first reported last
month, the Clinton administration is said by intelligence and
security specialists -- who admitted being involved -- to have
bugged the conclave and then provided classified secrets to the
Democratic National Committee. This in turn allegedly was used
as bait to barter with potential big-buck donors for large contributions
to the Democratic coffers, sources in and out of government claim.
This week the story continued to develop with new twists and
turns. Former officials of the National Security Council, or
NSC, and high-level economic advisers tell Insight they remain
deeply concerned that classified information may have been leaked
for political purposes. "That would make it blackmail,"
says a former senior-level Bush appointee who asked not to be
identified because of an ongoing business relationship with the
Clinton administration. "I find the story totally credible.
I wouldn't put it past this administration." Insight also
detailed in earlier reports a series of alleged criminal activities,
including the procuring of boys to engage in sexual activities
with diplomats; FBI agents accepting thousands of dollars of
kickbacks; and, the most serious offense, the White House providing
top-secret trade information to two West Coast law firms working
off the books for the DNC . . . The FBI is believed to have bugged
more than 300 locations, with electronic audio and video surveillance
devices used to monitor 10,000 to 15,000 conversations -- much
of it real-time data that was bounced from satellites to the
NSA. The monitoring stations usually were placed near a Secret
Service perimeter or Naval Intelligence facilities. And many
of the targets concerned large contracts with Vietnam, sources
say . . . The boys are believed to have been 15 to 17 years old.
As shocking as this may be, some say it's routine. A former Bush
economic adviser observes, "The sex? That's done all the
time. If a foreign diplomat wants a companion, the State Department
provides it. It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman. They have
a special fund set up for that." Another former NSC official
who requested anonymity says other countries also do it. "I
was offered every sexual favor you can imagine. I turned it down
all the time. After a while they left me alone and stopped offering
me."

[The full Washington
Post story is available for a fee in the Post archives.]

ODESSA
MADRE

"You don' pull
on Superman's cape. You don' spit into the wind. You don' tug
the mask off the Lone Ranger and, baby, you don' mess with Odessa,
okay? I may be old, and I may be ugly, but I ain't dumb. That's
why I was the 'Queen.'" - Odessa Madre

Courtland Milloy, in a
wonderful 1980 Washington Post story, describes Odessa Madre
this way: "Perhaps no other person has seen so much of the
District's narcotics, numbers and 'tenderloin' trade and is still
alive to tell about it. According to one police affidavit filed
in U.S. District Court here in 1975, 'She practices a resourceful
and shrewd form of circumspection that has enabled her to survive
and thrive in her illegal activities over the past 40 years.'
After monitoring her activities with two court-ordered wiretaps,
one police source was quoted in court records as saying that
Madre frequently gave parties at her home and that /as a matter
of course, Miss Madre set out a number of bowls of cocaine, heroin
and marijuana for her guests' pleasure.' But she protested that
decription in a recent interview: 'Everybody knows I can't stand
them reefers.'"

By 1980, Madre had been
picked up 30 times on 57 charges over a 48 year span, seven of
them spent in a federal prison. She bought a Lincoln Continental
when she got out and purchased a Cadillac Seville after serving
a later three year sentence.

Madre grew up in a mixed
neighborhood of blacks and Irish, the latter heavily populating
the DC police force and, in the end, often looking out for their
childhood friend. "Negroes and Irishmen got along real well,"
Madre told Milloy. "They would fight amongst themselves,
but we wouldn't fight each other. If somebody outside Cowtown
came to fight the Irish, the Negroes would chunk bricks at them.
We were like a big happy family." Writes Milloy: "Thus
began a long and prosperous relationship with members of the
Metropolitan Police Department. When Madre's childhood friends
grew up, they became captains, lieutenants and even superintendents
in the police department, like their fathers. As the year passed
and Madre became the notorious 'Queen,' many of her childhood
buddies couldn't forget that she had once been their compatriot
in the 'Great Rock Chunkin' Wars' against the Italian and German
kids."

At her peak in the 1940s,
Madre was earning about $100,000 a year, and had at least six
bawdy houses, bookmaking operations, and a headquarters at 2204
14th Street known as the Club Madre. Among the performers there
were Moms Mabley, Count Basie and Nat King Cole.

Long time residents remember
Madre walking into her club followed by her girls and sitting
at a table with 12 long stemmed roses. They also recall that
the girls got Sunday off and could be seen observed relaxing
on the porch of Madre's place.

In 1952 the Kefauver committee, targeting organized crime in
DC, found a pattern of payoffs by local mobsters to the cops,
funneled, it appeared, largely through Madre. Milloy notes that
"Two sergeants testified they had been demoted and assigned
to school-crossing duty because they had refused a payoff from
Madre and had participated in the arrest of know gampblers -
including her. The superior officer who demoted them was John
Murphy, they testified. 'Yeah, I knew him,' Mandre said. 'Grew
up with him in Cowtown.' There was also testimony from other
policemen that Madre had paid police superintendent James Barrett
$2,000 a month in 'ice' payments for nearly a year. 'Somebody
had to give 'em the money.'"

Madre's own evalution of
it all: "You say was it worth it? Child, you wonder does
crime pay? I'll tell you, yes. It pays a helluva lot of money.
And money is something. I don't care who you are, when you got
money you can get a lot of doors open because there's always
some larcenous heart who's gonna listen to you. "And when
you show 'em that money . . . if you got a wad, honey, they'll
suck up to ya like you was a Tootsie Roll."

OTHER TALES

THE 2000s

JEFF
GANNON

IN AN ABRUPT and somewhat tardy move, the
Review finally started to pay attention to the Jeff Gannon story.
We originally thought it nothing more than a case of some guy
being paid to ask softball questions at a White House news conference,
hardly more despicable than the far more common practice of reporters
asking them for free. But then came the sex angle and the realization
that the only remaining grounds for termination of public office
in Washington are an illegal nannie or gay sex.

Since DC has a large and happily out gay
community it may seem a bit odd that a straight eye for a gay
guy could get into such trouble, but these acts are sometimes
accompanied by less pleasant activities such as bribery for governmental
favors or blackmail. Further, there have been persistent reports,
as Wayne Madsen writes, of a GOP pedophile and male prostitution
ring.

Sex and corrupt politics in DC is nothing
new. For example, during the Civil War there were 450 brothels
in the capital. Part of the mythology of Washington, however,
is what might be called the Jim Lehrer Illusion, which is to
say that all people in DC do is sit around and rationally debate
policy alternatives. In fact, Washington politics is also heavily
driven by cowardice, bribery, blackmail, deceit, fear, loyalty
to old buddies and even older bodies, cooptation, sex, and just
plain crime. Journalists who pretend otherwise either don't understand
what is going on or are covering for someone.

The public often misunderstands the importance
of Washington scandals, assuming them to be a simple dalliance,
individual failing, or private offense. What makes both sex and
crime in DC different, at least when those in power are involved,
is that there is far more opportunity for blackmail and far more
skill at covering things up.

The blackmail may be used by members of
one branch of government against those of another, by lobbyists
against members of Congress, by the police against whomever they
wish, and by foreign powers. For example, one way to keep a congress
member bought is for a lobbyist to provide him with high class
prostitutes. And it is noteworthy that both the Israelis and
Boris Yeltsin apparently knew about Bill Clinton's affair with
Monica Lewinsky before the American public did.

The city's ecology lends particular importance
to gay sex simply because greater public antipathy makes it an
even easier target for the blackmailer, witness the case a few
years back when DC police officers were found to be running an
extortion racket against those who visited gay bars.

Finally, the exposure of impropriety almost
inevitably raises the issue of hypocrisy since the participating
official often has inveighed against the discovered offense or
attempted to ban, punish, or otherwise suppress the revealed
practice. One of the more ironic examples was when, during the
1960s, a white southern senator was caught with a black prostitute.
Said a civil rights leader, "Oh he's just one of those sunup
to sundown segregationists." Washington is full of sunup
to sundown moralists.

There is this quality to the tale of a
gay plant at Bush news conferences. One wonders, for example,
if in the wake the Gannon matter George Bush will now come out
in favor a Sanctity in News Conferences amendment to the Constitution.

Further, the military subtext of Gannon's
site suggests similar ruminations. One might even speculate on
the homoerotic themes of military service and behavior or even
on war as the ultimate closeted gay sado-masochistic affair.
If so, what a price the world has paid for its homophobia.

The ability to cover up scandal or crime
is also much greater in Washington. This may be accomplished
by relying on the social club rules of the federal city, through
the aid of acquiescent journalists, by official spin or censorship,
or by resort to the capital's various law enforcement agencies,
each one beholden for budget and top appointments to some federal
department.

For example, both the Attorney General
and the U.S. Attorney (who handles all DC crimes) are appointed
by the president. The FBI, DEA, National Park police and the
Secret Service, not to mention the Aqueduct police, all work
for the president. And the Metropolitan Police Department and
the Capitol Police are under the thumb of Congress, which approves
their budgets and exercises behind-the-scenes authority. There
is not a single police agency within the boundaries of Washington
that does not report to the politicians of Congress or the White
House.

WAYNE MADSEN, ONLINE JOURNAL - Details are emerging that threaten to immerse
the Bush administration in a major scandal. "Gannongate,"
which is only now being mentioned by the mainstream news media,
threatens to expose a potentially damaging GOP pedophile and
male prostitution ring dating back to the 1980s and the administration
of George H. W. Bush. James D. Guckert, using the name Jeff Gannon
and possibly other aliases, was also running gay porn sites,
one with a U.S. Marine Corps theme that solicited males for prostitution.
. .

Gannon bypassed established Secret Service
security controls, including a background check requiring a social
security number, to obtain a White House press pass that identified
him by an alias, an action seen by many seasoned Washington journalists
as only being possible if he had favorable treatment from White
House staff. . . One White House reporter expressed revulsion
over the fact that it was [Ari] Fleischer who took away press
credential from the late long-time White House correspondent
Sarah McClendon and handed them to Gannon. . .

Gannongate is reminiscent of a huge political
scandal that surfaced in Nebraska in 1989 when it was learned
that Lawrence King, the head of Franklin Community Credit Union
in Omaha and a rising African American star in the GOP (he sang
the national anthem at George H. W. Bush's 1988 nominating convention
in New Orleans), was a kingpin, along with top Republicans in
Nebraska and Washington, DC, including George H. W. Bush, in
a child prostitution and pedophilia scandal. King was later convicted
and jailed for fraud but pedophile and prostitution charges were
never brought against him and other Nebraska Republican businessmen
and politicians.

The scandal, investigated by Nebraska State
Senator Loran Schmit, his assistant John DeCamp (a former GOP
State Senator), State Senate Committee investigator Gary Caradori,
and former CIA Director William Colby, reached the very top echelons
of the George H. W. Bush administration and GOP. Child prostitutes
from Boys Town and other orphanages in Nebraska as well as children
procured from China were reportedly flown to Washington for sexcapades
with Republican politicians. GOP lobbyist Craig Spence and a
number of GOP officials in the administration and Congress were
implicated in the scandal, including Labor Secretary Elizabeth
Dole's liaison to the White House. Young male members of the
military in Washington, DC were particularly sought after by
the prostitution ring. During the early 1980s, a number of naval
officers were implicated in a child pornography ring that extended
from Oregon to the San Francisco Bay area and to Chicago and
Washington, DC. The story about that ring was covered up by then-Secretary
of the Navy John Lehman.

The Nebraska pedophile scandal was similarly
covered up on orders from the highest levels of power in the
Bush White House. Caradori and his young son were killed in a
suspicious plane crash in Illinois in 1990. Colby was found floating
dead in the Chesapeake Bay, near his home, in 1996. Craig Spence
allegedly committed suicide in 1989. Witnesses, many of whom
were abused themselves, were intimidated and subsequently jailed
in Nebraska and the investigation of the pedophile scandal eventually
collapsed. . .

JOHN ARAVOISIS, AMERICA BLOG - A news producer
for a major network just told me that Gannon told the producer
the US was going to attack Iraq four hours before President Bush
announced it to the nation. According to the producer, Gannon
specifically told them that in four hours the president was going
to be making a speech to the nation announcing that the US was
bombing Iraq. The producer told me they were surprised that Gannon,
working with such a small news outfit, could have access to such
information, but "what did you know, he was right,"
the producer said today. The producer went on to say that Gannon
often had correct scoops on major stories. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/

DC MADAM

REPORT: DC MADAM WAS A CIA FAVORITE

WAYNE
MADSEN REPORT There was no
mistake that when Deborah Jeane Palfrey's phone records were
made public by order of US Judge Gladys Kessler, shortly before
she asked to be reassigned from the case, that Palfrey's Pamela
Martin & Associates escort agency had some very intriguing
clientele. If one were to have mapped the phone numbers on Palfrey's
list, McLean, Virginia would have looked like the epicenter of
an earthquake. McLean is the home to the CIA, Washington's top
politicians, and assorted foreign and domestic business movers
and shakers who travel in and out of the CIA's shadow. . .

As she left her Orlando condo for her mother's
home [shortly before her alleged suicide], Palfrey was noticed
taking a few suitcases with a white paper file box. Palfrey told
the [building] manager the box contained some important papers,
possibly having to do with her escort business. . .

In fact, it is a certainty that one of
the actual "corporate clients" of the PMA agency was
the CIA itself. Palfrey's escorts included college professors,
a naval officer, a legal secretary for one of Washington's top
international law firms, essentially those who would be reliable
to pick up needed intelligence from a designated target. PMA's
clients included as many foreign political and business leaders
as American ones. It was the potential for blackmail and seeking
favors that made PMA, in business for over 13 years, a favorite
for the CIA. No other escort agency in the Washington area provided
the top-level credentials possessed by PMA. For that reason,
PMA was the agency of choice for the CIA. . .

On September 1, 2007, WMR reported: "WMR
has learned that on August 31, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the indicted
Pamela Martin & Associates proprietor, filed a 'Motion for
Pretrial Conference to Consider Matters Relating to classified
information' under the 'Classified Information Procedures Act'
with the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. The purpose of
the filing alerts the government that Palfrey's defense will
likely involved the disclosure of evidence and identities presently
deemed 'classified" by the U.S. government.'"

The CIPA is only invoked in cases when
classified national security information must be revealed. It
is now clear that Palfrey, who never admitted to this editor
any links between her agency and the CIA, was a contractor for
the spy agency. Palfrey's citing of CIPA is an indication that
she signed a non-disclosure agreement with the CIA stating that
she would never reveal classified information as a result of
her special relationship with the agency unless authorized to
do so. Palfrey's non-disclosure agreement would have resulted
in her making no comment to the press about any relationship.
However, it must be stated that Palfrey always insisted to this
editor that it was quite possible that some of her employees
may have had a relationship with U.S. intelligence but that she
would not necessarily know that to be the case.

Palfrey was never comfortable with her
court-appointed attorney Preston Burton. Burton once was a partner
in the law office of Plato Cacheris in Washington. Cacheris'
name is synonymous in DC circles with CIA scandals, particularly
those dealing in espionage. Burton's resume of clients is a "Who's
Who" of the past two decades of spy scandals: the CIA's
Soviet spy Aldrich Ames, the FBI's Soviet spy Robert Hanssen,
Oliver North's secretary Fawn Hall, Watergate convicted Attorney
General John Mitchell, and Monica Lewinsky. Burton, himself,
was involved in the defense of Ames, Hanssen, Lewinsky, as well
as Ana Belen Montes, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst
convicted of spying for Cuba.

The top CIA cases involved the US Eastern
District of Virginia court in Alexandria, where Plato Cacheris'
brother, James Cacheris, serves as a senior judge. Known as the
"rocket docket," Plato and James Cacheris have overseen
a number of espionage cases, including Ames, that saw quick pleas
and lifetime prison sentences. Mention the name Cacheris in Washington,
DC and CIA comes instantly to mind among those who know the game.
Palfrey was obviously aware of the CIA's past use of "rocket
dockets" in Alexandria and Washington and the "exchange"
of emails between U.S. Judge James Robertson, federal prosecutors
William Cowden and Daniel Butler, and Burton on the weekend before
Burton agreed to not call any defense witnesses and allow the
case to be sent directly to the jury was a sure indication of
outside interference in the case. Robertson, who replaced Kessler
after she requested to be reassigned, promised to reveal the
emails to the public, indicating he was legally required to do
so. To date, to our knowledge, they have not been released. .
.

There is another interesting postscript
to the Palfrey case. Palfrey, after deciding to close down PMA
and move to Europe, chose to buy an apartment in the former East
Berlin. This editor discussed this with Palfrey and the consensus
was that, for European prices, there were some good deals on
real estate in eastern Berlin as the former Soviet sector has
lagged behind in improving infrastructure. However, it was intriguing
that Palfrey, who spent her time mostly in California and Florida,
would have known about a good deal in East Berlin. Or did one
of her agency handlers recommend it as the perfect place to get
away from the "game" in Washington?

FEW DEATHS could cause as much relief in Washington as did
the alleged suicide of DC Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey. One need
only consider the rapid demise of Governor Eliot Spitzer after
it was discovered he had used a similar escort service to realize
that Palfrey was not welcomed by many of the capital's powerful
men as a living repository of their sexual habits.

We are not speaking of a small number.
Palfrey estimated her business involved some 10,000 clients -
most in and around the most powerful city in America.

This is not to say that Palfrey did not
commit suicide, only that her name may be reasonably added to
those whose cause of death can not be - and may never be - firmly
determined.

She will not be the first such death in
recent American politics. At least nine persons involved in some
way with the Clintons also committed suicide under less than
certain circumstances, most notably Vincent Foster. Nearly 30
others also suffered from Arkansas sudden death syndrome, but
clearly at someone else's hand.

What we do know about Palfrey is that her
operation had some 10,000 male clients, and not one has been
subject to legal prosecution. Two of the women involved, Jean
Palfrey and Brandy Britton, both allegedly committed suicide
and both by hanging. Palfrey indicated she didn't know whether
Britton killed herself, saying, "There are many, many family
members who say this was not the case." When radio host
Alex Jones said to Palfrey in 2007, "And you're not planning
to commit suicide," Palfrey responded, "And I'm not
planning to commit suicide."

There is no apparent logic for the massive
legal assault on Palfrey. In fact, prostitution isn't even a
federal crime; she was charged under federal racketeering law.
When her house was raided a year and a half ago, the swat squad
went through everything but curiously ignored 46 boxes of information
about her clients. Interestingly also, the attack began in earnest
immediately after Palfrey had put her house on the market, closed
her business, and transferred some money to Germany where she
planned to retire. In fact, she was in Germany when US postal
inspectors, pretending to be home buyers, illegally sought entrance
into her house from a realtor without a warrant.

You add up the little pieces and it is
clear that something much bigger than prostitution was involved.
Was Palfrey being threatened because she had, in effect, decided
to leave the mob taking along her many tales? Was she a bit player
in some much larger blackmail operation? And did she end her
life or did someone do it for her?

Our approach to such matters is to treat
them as open cases. We do not presume a conspiracy, but neither
do we accept the establishment's approach of rushing to the conclusion
most comfortable to itself. In this case, for example, there
are some 10,000 members of the establishment with a vested interest
in not examining the evidence too much.

We do know that the Palfrey case was one
of the strangest prosecutions the capital has ever seen. Judges,
prosecutors, the media and the political elite all seemed extraordinarily
determined to put a cap on how much information the case revealed.
So far, they have been quite successful.

AP The body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was
found in a shed near her mother's home about 20 miles northwest
of Tampa. Police said the 52-year-old Palfrey left at least two
suicide notes and other writings to her family in a notebook,
but they did not disclose their contents. Palfrey apparently
hanged herself with nylon rope from the shed's ceiling. Her mother
discovered the body. . . Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her
daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication
that alcohol or drugs were involved, police Capt. Jeffrey Young
said. . .

"I am sure as heck am not going to
be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, you know,
four to eight years here, because I'm shy about bringing in the
deputy secretary of whatever," Palfrey told ABC last year
when she released phone records that revealed some of her clients.
"Not for a second. I'll bring every last one of them in
if necessary."

Dan Moldea, a Washington writer who befriended
Palfrey while considering writing a book about her, said she
was cautiously optimistic about her trial, even when the case
went before the jury. After the conviction, Moldea sent her an
e-mail but didn't hear back. A week later, he said, he sent another
note entitled "A Concerned Friend" asking whether she
was OK. Again, he didn't hear back. After hearing of her death,
he recalled a conversation over dinner last year when the subject
of prison came up. "She said, 'I am not going back to prison.
I will commit suicide first,'" Moldea said.

TIME Palfrey contacted Moldea last year
to provide her help writing a book. "She had done time once
before [for prostitution]," Moldea recalls. "And it
damn near killed her. She said there was enormous stress - it
made her sick, she couldn't take it, and she wasn't going to
let that happen to her again." . . .

When a former employee of Palfrey's, Brandy
Britton, hanged herself before going to trial, Palfrey told the
press, "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton
wasn't made of."

Palfrey's trial, which concluded in mid-April
with a conviction, is one of very few such cases prosecuted in
the federal courts. Most prostitution violations are dealt with
at the state or municipal level, and attract little publicity.
In the Palfrey case, prosecutors obliged a string of obviously
embarrassed clients and employees of the escort service to appear
on the witness stand and testify under oath. Nearly all testified
that they had engaged in sexual acts in exchange for money, a
version of events that contradicted Palfrey's claims that she
had been running a high-end sexual fantasy service - and that
any actual sexual activity was against the rules, and clearly
stated when employees were hired. . .

It was Palfrey's phone records that led
to problems for prominent Washington figures once her prosecution
got under way. She had thousands of pages, including 10,000 to
15,000 numbers of clients calling in to her California residence.
Besides Sen. Vitter, others whose names appeared on those records
included Randall Tobias, a senior State Department official in
charge of foreign aid - who had publicly inveighed against prostitution
and who quickly resigned after his name was made public. Harlan
Ullman, a well-known military specialist at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, a Washington think tank, was also
identified.

According to Moldea, who last year examined
Palfrey's phone records and discovered the name of Vitter, a
Republican, as a client of Palfrey's escort service - Pamela
Martin & Associates - the last time he saw Palfrey in person
was less than week before her conviction on prostitution charges
on April 15. "A friend and I met with Jeanne and we had
a sushi lunch near the courtroom," he said. "She was
upbeat and hopeful. She felt the prosecution had not made the
case and that she was going to walk. She was hopeful to the end."
But, when the jury came in with her conviction, she reportedly
was taken aback. "When I heard that I knew that, for her,
it was all over. There is no question in my mind that she took
her own life."

HUGH SPRUNT, CAS BB - [Palfrey] undertook
a number of actions prior to her death that were not consistent
with a despondent/depressed person contemplating suicide. . .
She tried to get her hands on at least one stock investment (that
was declining in value like many stocks these days) so she could
sell it and reinvest the proceeds (The feds had seized her investments
as security for her being able to pay any fine associated with
her eventual criminal penalties that likely would include a lot
of jail time). Her attorneys and at least some of the reporters
who covered her story have stated that she didn't appear suicidal
to them

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, MARCH 2008 - One thing is clear about the so-called DC Madam
aka Deborah Jeane Palfrey case: there is a stunning contrast
between the lid being kept on the names of male clients in this
matter and the interest of the media compared to the speed with
which Eliot Spitzer name became notorious in a similar DC case.
Admittedly the alleged charges for a prostitute in the DC Madam
case were far less than in the Emperor operation, but both were
sufficient to attract the police.

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported
a name in the DC Madam case that was even more famous than Spitzers'
but there has been no denial and no libel suit, not to mention
a striking lack of curiosity by the Washington press. Our own
best guess as to why the DC Madam client list is being handled
so gingerly: the appearance on it of too many good news sources
not to mention the possibility of a few well known. media types
as well.

Madsen reported dozens of high profile
clients as well as a gag by top executives on the ABC reporters
who were allowed to see the telephone list, allegedly after pressure
from the White House. The story, in any case, is bizarre to say
the least:

DEBORAH JEANE PALFREY, JULY 2007 - During the period when the decision to take the
records off the market was made, Senior Executive Producer Rhonda
Schwartz for Brian Ross, of ABC News, in New York approached
[attorney] Mr. Sibley and me about the records. Told ABC News
"does not pay for information," they nonetheless would
incur in our circumstance the expense of culling the billing
invoices for possible witnesses, leads and general information,
which ultimately could be beneficial to my defense.

Having gotten estimates at the time for
the cost to research and back-track telephone numbers, along
with subsequent owner data (tens of thousands of dollars), we
gladly accepted ABC's offer of assistance. In return, ABC asked
that they be given exclusivity regarding the first public interview
with me and more importantly, all of the phone records for years
1993 to 2006.

While the laborious task of copying and
transferring the enormous amount of data to ABC was ongoing,
the government went to Judge Kessler and obtained the current
restraining order prohibiting either my civil counsel, Mr. Sibley
or me from further distribution of the records. The government's
justification for the temporary injunction was witness harassment
and intimidation -- having abandoned its prior rationalization,
i.e. asset forfeiture. Consequently, ABC received only 80% of
years 2002 thru 2006.

Contrary to popular belief, they never
had a complete set of all 13 years. In the final analysis, it
really didn't matter whether ABC had 4 years or 13, their constant
assurances and reassurances to Mr. Sibley and me that they could
be trusted with my story -- for the almost two months they researched
2002 to 2006 -- fell flat on May 4, when the much hyped, sweep's
week 20/20 broadcast failed to deliver even one revelation; this
despite, a major ad campaign blitz on the part of the network
to the contrary. Both Mr. Sibley and I can attest to the fact
-- having been an integral part of the 7 1/2 week vetting process
-- that there were and are noteworthy names to be named, in the
four years. Why ABC chose to jump ship seemingly at the eleventh
hour would be pure speculation, here. The bottom line is that
they did and by doing so, they did a tremendous disservice to
the American people.. .

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT MAY 2007 - The corporate media still does not get it about
the so-called "Washington Madam" case. Beyond just
another titillating DC sex scandal, this affair involves the
U.S. Attorneys firings, massive bribery involving military and
homeland security contracts, and potential blackmail of high
government officials. WMR can report that Disney and ABC executives
spiked the Washington Madam story at the very last . . . The
decision by Disney and ABC to kill the 20/20 story resulted in
a shocked news staff at ABC News' DeSales Street bureau across
the street from the Mayflower Hotel, one of the rendezvous points
for some Pamela Martin clients. Our sources stated that Ross,
Schwartz, Rood, and others at ABC tried their best to get the
story out but were overruled by senior executives at ABC in New
York and Disney headquarters in Burbank, California who, in turn,
were under heavy pressure from the Bush White House.

The Washington Madam case also involves
criminal conspiracy and malfeasance within the Justice Department,
Internal Revenue Service, and Postal Inspection Service. Palfrey's
case file was not opened until June 2004 after she had been in
business for over a decade without any pressure from the government.
After Baltimore Police Commissioner and later Maryland State
Police Superintendent Ed Norris was charged in May 2004 with
three criminal counts by US Attorney Thomas DiBiagio, the IRS
opened a file on Palfrey the following month. It is clear that
with Norris, a 20 year veteran of the New York Police Department,
facing up to 30 years in prison, he entered into a plea bargain
with DiBiagio. In return for his cooperation, which included
Norris naming Pamela Martin as one of the recipients of Baltimore
Police supplemental accounts money, he got six months in prison
and six months home detention. Norris now hosts a radio show
in Baltimore.

DiBiagio's assistant US Attorney Jonathan
Luna, who once worked at the Brooklyn District Attorneys' office
when a probe was being conducted of both Norris and his friend,
former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, was on to
Norris' corruption in Baltimore. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley
appointed Norris as police commissioner but soon became disenchanted
with his performance. After his relection as Governor in 2002,
Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich appointed Norris as Maryland
State Police Superintendent. Luna was brutally murdered near
the Pennsylvania Turnpike in December 2003.

DC CITY DESK, MAY 2007 The judge in the Jeanne Palfrey case has issued
a temporary restraining order on Palfrey and her civil attorney
to keep them from releasing more information about her clients
to the news media. This strengthens suspicions that the judge
and ABC News - which was given Palfrey's records - may be trying
to suppress some of these names, especially since one the names
being circulated around town is an extremely high White House
official. Basically, the problem is this: if Jean Palfrey committed
a crime so did all her clients and they are not entitled to the
protection they are being given. In the best of worlds, prostitution
would not be a crime but under the circumstances there is only
one honest choice in this matter: either drop the case or open
the files. Otherwise it is fair to wonder whether there is a
cover-up going on of criminal activity by prominent Washingtonians

NEWS 8, DC, MAY 2007 - A lawyer for alleged Washington madam Deborah
Jeane Palfrey wants ABC News to disclose the identity of a federal
prosecutor identified in a recent news report as a client of
Palfrey's escort service. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, Palfrey's civil lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, contends
that the Justice Department should compel ABC to disclose the
prosecutor's identity and whether he had any role in the Palfrey
investigation. . .

BALTIMORE EXAMINER, MAY 2007 - A woman accused of running a Washington-area prostitution
ring says former University of Maryland professor Brandy Britton
worked for her. Britton told The Examiner before her death that
she previously worked for an escort service called East Coast
Elites, but she never mentioned Deborah Jeane Palfrey or her
firm, Pamela Martin & Associates, during a series of interviews
with this newspaper. . . Britton committed suicide in January,
days before she was scheduled to stand trial on prostitution
charges and be evicted from her $600,000 Ellicott City home.
She faced up to a year in prison on each count, but Howard County
prosecutors said that if convicted, she likely wouldn't have
served any time. Britton's Howard County police file makes no
mention of Palfrey or her escort service. Police said Britton
was working alone when arrested in January 2006, and they have
not connected her case to Palfrey. . . Although Britton said
her clients included "police, lawyers and judges,"
her notes don't appear to include the names of prominent people.
They contain many partial names and code names, including notes
for appointments with men identified only as "Robert,"
"Bernard" and "David." Next to their names,
she sometimes wrote the callers' purported occupations, such
as "Dr." or "Accountant." Britton was a former
assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at University
of Maryland, Baltimore County. She resigned in 1999. . . . "I
thought I would hate the job, and I'd just have to do it,"
she said. "But I really liked it, and I made some really
good friends, and I like men more than I ever did before. It's
a long story, but as a feminist it made me see things differently.
They love their families and their kids. They're good guys that
really love their wives."

ABC NEWS BLOTTER - MAY 2007 Some of the most in-demand women working for the
"D.C. Madam" were in their 50s, according to the woman
at the center of the scandal. "There was never an age limit.
I hired women well into their 50s," Deborah Jeane Palfrey
told ABC News. "They were some of the most popular women
on staff.". . . From career professionals to graduate students,
most women who came to Palfrey to work did so because they needed
money -- to pay off credit card debt, cover school loans or pay
tuition fees, according to Palfrey. . . "Many of these girls
were a lot of talk and no action -- as most people seem to be
from time to time," Palfrey said. Many applicants would
initially be very willing, but when they went on their first
appointment "they just freeze and they think, 'I don't know
if I can do this.'". . . "It was very boring, mostly,"
Palfrey told ABC News. "Very 'Groundhog Day,' the same thing
over and over and over and over, and over. For me, anyway.".
. . For their part, the clients were typically decent to Palfrey's
women, she said. "I had many gals tell me that their boyfriends
treated them, oh, just purely awful. And they would go to many
of these appointments, and the man would have roses waiting for
them. And nobody had ever given them roses before.". . .
"I think I empowered a lot of women. I got a lot of women
through graduate school. I think the people that used the service
were by and large quite pleased."

CHANNEL 9 - MAY 2007 - A legal secretary at one of Washington's most prominent
and well-connected law firms, Akin Gump Strauss Houer & Feld
LLP, has been suspended after telling her bosses she secretly
worked at night for the escort service run by the so-called D.C.
Madam, Jeane Palfrey. The woman both serviced clients and, at
times, helped to run the business, Palfrey told ABC News in an
interview to be broadcast on "20/20" Friday. The firm
said it would not make her name public.

According to e-mails the woman sent to
Palfrey on her Akin Gump account, she "enjoyed and even
missed" the work she did at night for Palfrey, who has been
charged by federal prosecutors with running a large scale prostitution
ring. "Perhaps not the weekly grind, but was thinking that
a day a week would be fun and spa money," the legal secretary
wrote to Palfrey last year, after Palfrey had closed her business
and was considering whether to re-open it.

The Akin Gump secretary was described by
Palfrey as an "absolutely lovely gal," who was working
as an escort "to go back to school and get her education,
to finish her college degree."

Considered one of the most powerful firms
in Washington, Akin Gump partners make up a who's who of Washington
insiders, including Vernon Jordan, former Speaker of the House
Tom Foley, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy
Thompson, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman
and co-founder Robert Strauss, an adviser to numerous presidents.

CAROL D. LEONNIG, WASHINGTON POST MAY
2007 - A former client of the woman
accused of being the D.C. madam is trying to block his name from
being aired on an ABC News program about her escort business
and the men who patronized it, saying publicity would amount
to witness intimidation, ABC said yesterday. In a letter to ABC,
Steven Salky, the man's attorney, wrote that he has "reason
to believe" that his client could be named tomorrow in a
"20/20" report about an alleged prostitution ring run
by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, ABC said. Salky would not identify
the man. The client expects to be a prosecution witness in Palfrey's
federal trial on racketeering charges, Salky told ABC. Identifying
him would violate a court order barring harassment of potential
witnesses, he said. . .

CHANNEL FOUR, DC APRIL 2007 - A woman charged with running a D.C.-area prostitution
ring on made good on her threat to identify high-profile clients,
naming a military strategist who developed the combat theories
known as "shock and awe" as a regular customer in court
papers. Harlan K. Ullman, a senior associate with the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, was named in court papers
filed by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is acting as her own lawyer.
Ullman, in a brief telephone interview, declined comment on the
claim. "The allegations are beneath the dignity of a comment,"
he said. . . Palfrey said in her motion that Ullman "is
only one of dozens of such officials" who will be exposed
as she prepares her defense.

HENRY K LEE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE,
APRIL 2007 - Palfrey's business
records include 46 pounds of phone bills of some 15,000 clients
of her business, Pamela Martin and Associates, Sibley said. Palfrey
originally threatened to sell those records to pay for her defense,
but a judge barred her from doing so. Authorities said Palfrey's
alleged prostitution ring involved 132 college-educated women
and generated more than $2 million.

SMOKING GUN, MARCH 2007 - Federal prosecutors want to gag an indicted former
Washington, D.C. madam who has recently threatened to go public
with details about her former customers. In a motion filed Monday
in U.S. District Court, investigators are seeking a protective
order covering discovery material to be provided to Deborah Palfrey
and her lawyers.

Palfrey, 50, was indicted last week on
racketeering and money laundering charges stemming from her operation
of the Pamela Martin & Associates escort service, which closed
last summer after 13 years in business. In their motion, government
lawyers claim that some discovery documents contain "personal
information" about Palfrey's former johns and prostitutes
that is "sensitive." . . .

According to the prosecution motion, while
Palfrey and her lawyers would be able to use the discovery material
to help prepare a defense, they would not be allowed to disclose
the documents to anyone else (nor use the material for any other
purposes). Palfrey, whose assets were frozen late last year,
has recently floated the idea of selling her escort business's
phone records. She has also "made statements that could
be considered veiled threats to cause embarrassment to former
customers and employees," according to the motion. . . .

Before closing her business, Palfrey operated
a web site touting Pamela Martin & Associates as "the
best adult agency around," claiming that it had an "ongoing
repeat clientele rate of 65-75%." Palfrey's site also advertised
for escorts. Prospective hookers, she noted, had to be at least
23 years old with two or more years of college. And her $275-an-appointment
employees had to be "weight proportionate to height."

WASHINGTON POST -
Ms. Palfreys business, which operated from 1993 to 2006, had
15,000 customers and a pool of 130 or so escorts, ranging in
age from 23 to 55, who worked as independent contractors, she
said in one court filing. "Best selection and availability
before 9 p.m. each evening," one advertisement she ran said.
Over the six years before the business shut down, she collected
more than $750,000 from the escorts, with whom she split fees
for each call, federal officials said in court filings.

AMY SCHATZ, WALL STREET JOURNAL - ABC News reported on one of its blogs that men
on the list include "a Bush administration economist, the
head of a conservative think tank, a prominent CEO, several lobbyists
and a handful of military officials."

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/

ABC NEWS BLOTTER -
Even call girls get performance reviews, at least the ones who
worked for Jeane Palfrey's Washington, D.C., escort service.
"Without being overtly vulgar, a pair of tits and an ass,
without accompanying brains, sophistication, LOOKS and carriage,
just won't cut it in this business or at least, not with this
particular agency!!" wrote Palfrey in a monthly newsletter
sent to the women who worked for her. . . In a January 1994 newsletter,
she wrote, "Congress is back in session. This always helps
to boost business." In another edition, she complained,
"That damn Monday night football...ruines [sic] business
every single Monday night!". . . "Organization and
efficiency need to be, No, must be the bedrock from which the
on-call escort service operates," reads one passage from
1993. In that particular article, Palfrey encouraged her employees
("girls," as she called them) to invest in cellular
phones. "Searching for pay phones in strange places and
driving in circles when lost are extraordinarily exasperating
and frustrating experiences, which need not be," Palfrey
counseled. . . In one issue, Palfrey even gave a product endorsement.
"Victoria's Secret," she wrote, "is the only place
a Pamela Martin girl shops."

MORE INSTRUCTIONS
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/

FIVE WASHINGTON LAWYERS CONTACT ALLEGED
MADAM TO SEE IF THEIR CLIENTS ARE ON HER LIST

WASHINGTON POST - [Alleged madam Deborah]
Palfrey's flamboyant attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said
Friday that he has been contacted by five lawyers recently, asking
whether their clients' names are on Palfrey's list of 10,000
to 15,000 phone numbers. Some, Sibley said, have inquired about
whether accommodations could be made to keep their identities
private. ABC is expected to air a report on Palfrey and her clients
on "20/20" on May 4, during sweeps.

More revelations are in the offing. Ross
said the list includes the names of some "very prominent
people," as well as a number of women with "important
and serious jobs" who had worked as escorts for the firm.

The disclosures have been made sparely
and artfully. Two weeks ago, in court documents about calling
former clients to testify on her behalf, Palfrey named Harlan
K. Ullman, an academic whose main claim to fame was a scholarly
paper he wrote more than a decade ago on the military strategy
known as "shock and awe." Responded Ullman: "It
doesn't deserve the dignity of a response."

Sibley also filed notice that he intends
to depose political consultant Dick Morris in a separate civil
proceeding. Morris would not comment.

US AID DIRECTOR WHO USED ESCORT SERVICE
ALSO REQUIRED GROUPS SIGN ANTI-PROSTITUTION LOYALTY OATH

THINK PROGRESS - U.S. AID director Randall
Tobias, who resigned yesterday upon admitting that he frequented
a Washington escort service, oversaw a controversial policy advocated
by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving
anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution "loyalty oath."

Aid groups bitterly opposed the policy,
charging that it "was so broad - and applied even to their
private funds - that it would obstruct their outreach to sex
workers who are at high risk of transmitting the AIDS virus."
But President Bush wouldn't budge. He signed a 2003 National
Security Presidential Directive saying prostitution "and
related activities" were "inherently harmful and dehumanizing."

Several groups and countries had their
funding cut due to the policy. Brazil lost $40 million for "one
of its most successful anti-AIDS strategies, persuading sex workers
to use condoms or other measures to stop spreading the disease."

During an "Ask the White House"
online chat in 2004, Tobias defended the policy, saying the U.S.
was "partnering with communities" to begin "fighting
sex trafficking and prostitution, while still serving victims
of these activities." Tobias added that he was overseeing
several "highly successful" relationship programs "aimed
at men and boys to help them develop healthy relationships with
women."

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/28/tobias-prostitution/

SMOKING GUN -
In a TSG interview, Palfrey admitted operating an escort firm,
but claimed that her workers did not engage in "illegal
sexual activities." There are "a lot of erotic activities
that one can do without participating in things that are illegal,"
she claimed. Investigators contend that after Palfrey hires a
prostitute, she sends the woman to a "screening" appointment
where she is required to have sex "without payment"
so as to ensure that the prospective hooker is not a law enforcement
officer. Palfrey, who spoke to TSG from Germany, said that agents
raiding her home would have found nothing since she did not keep
computerized records and regularly shredded documents. Asked
about the nature of her clientele, Palfrey called the identity
of her johns a "salacious detail" of which she was
unaware. "I never kept records," she claimed. "I
protected the client's confidentiality. . . they trusted me."
But Palfrey did speculate that she may have come to the attention
of federal agents because her operation had somehow intersected
with a more high profile case, like that of convicted ex-congressman
Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Investigators are reportedly
examining charges that a defense contractor provided hookers
to Cunningham as part of an influence-peddling scheme. Palfrey
did not claim a nexis between her escort service and Cunningham,
but invoked the disgraced pol's name while saying that she would
wager that the basis for the federal probe of her business "had
solely to do with some Duke Cunningham-type bigwig client that
got caught up in something and started to say, 'Do you know this?'
and 'Do you know that?' And that he might have been able to lead
them to somebody." Palfrey, who said she started her service
in D.C. because "it's a very liberal, sophisticated, cosmopolitan
area," advertised her company as featuring women "23
and older, with two or more years of college education, who either
work and/or go to school in the daytime." Palfrey told TSG
that she shuttered her escort business in mid-August because
her female employees were "driving me crazy. They were a
pain in the ass to deal with." She added, "It was just
time to start a different life and do different things, move
on."

In April
2001, Rick Yannuzzi,
the CIA's deputy national intelligence officer for strategic
and nuclear programs, is found dead at his home in the Oakton
VA area. Police call it a suicide. According to the Washington
Post, "Yannuzzi's apparent suicide caught colleagues by
surprise and left them searching for possible explanations. Yannuzzi
apparently left a suicide note inwhich he expressed
love for his family but gave no explanation for taking his life,
sources said."

DEAN
CALBREATH AND JERRY KAMMER, COPLEY NEWS SERVICE - Poway military contractor Brent
Wilkes - whom Justice Department officials identify as the co-conspirator
- has long been active in local political circles, serving as
the San Diego County finance co-chairman of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
campaign and the state finance co-chairman for President Bush.
Wilkes has not been charged with a crime in the Cunningham case.
. . . Wilkes' story shows how gifts, favors and campaign contributions
can be used to gain lucrative business from the government. Over
the past 20 years, Wilkes has devoted much of his career to developing
political contacts in Washington

Brent Wilkes, founder of
ADCS Inc., is identified by officials as "co-conspirator
No. 1" in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery
case. Those who know Wilkes describe him as gregarious and ambitious,
a person who can make friends easily and toss them aside just
as quickly. . .

Wilkes made no bones about
where his money was coming from. His jet-black Hummer bore a
license plate reading MIPR ME - a reference to Military Interdepartmental
Purchase Requests, which authorize funds in the Pentagon.

Wilkes shared the benefits
of his largesse with the politicians who helped him. He took
Cunningham on several out-of-state trips on his corporate jet.
Cunningham has produced no records showing that he paid for food,
lodging or transportation while traveling to resorts with Wilkes,
although he does have receipts for several campaign trips on
Wilkes' jet.

Wilkes also bought a small
powerboat that he moored behind Cunningham's yacht, the Kelly
C, at the Capital Yacht Club in Washington, D.C. The boat was
available for Cunningham's use anytime Wilkes was not using it.

But what landed Wilkes
in trouble with federal prosecutors was his gifts to Cunningham.
According to Cunningham's plea agreement, "Co-conspirator
No. 1," gave $525,000 to Cunningham on May 13, 2004, to
pay off the second mortgage on Cunningham's home in Rancho Santa
Fe.

Co-conspirator No. 1 also
gave $100,000 to Cunningham on May 1, 2000, which went into Cunningham's
personal accounts in San Diego and Washington, D.C. And he paid
$11,116.50 to help pay Cunningham's mortgage on the Kelly C.

The plea agreement charged
that in return for the payments, Cunningham "used his public
office and took other official action to influence U.S. Department
of Defense personnel to award and execute government contracts."

Wilkes befriended other
legislators, too. He ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms,
in Washington - first in the Watergate Hotel and then in the
Westin Grand near Capitol Hill.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051204/news_1n4adcs.html

THE STARBUCKS MURDERS

JUNE 2000

The handling of the 1997
Starbucks murder case continues to raise eyebrows. Why, of all
the 301 slayings that took place in DC that same year, did only
these three killings attract the attention not only of the FBI
but of Attorney General Reno herself? Reno has overruled her
own US Attorney and called for the death penalty in the case.

There are two reasonable
explanations for the federal intrusion in the case. One is that
the murders took place in Georgetown, home of some of the city's
most powerful residents. The second is that one of the victims
was formerly a White House intern, Mary Caitrin Mahoney, allegedly
familiar with some of the licentious activities occurring there.

While there is no concrete
evidence that Mahoney was specifically targeted, the heavy involvement
of the federal government in what it claims was a routine murder
case inevitably raises questions. The appearance of Reno, the
Miss Fixit of Clinton crime and corruption investigations, is
even less reassuring. Reno squashed investigations into drug
and gubernatorial payoff aspects of the Department of Agriculture
case, has never bothered to go after Webb Hubbell for the taxes
he owes, and has repeatedly undermined the work of special prosecutors
and congressional investigators. And as Wllliam Safire rightfully
notes, Reno's Justice Department "wants none of the Clinton-Gore
Asian funny-money traffickers such as John Huang, Pauline Kanchanalak
and Charlie Trie to face punishment that might induce them to
involve any of the famous recipients of China's largess."
The accused in the case has recanted his confession, which was
acquired after extensive interrogation.

[Questions have arisen
about the circumstances under which Carl Derek Cooper confessed
to the Starbucks slaying in which former White House intern Caitlin
Mahoney and two other workers were killed. Cooper was questioned
for many hours, denied being involved, then accused someone else,
and then confessed, only to recant his confession after being
released by suburban Prince George's County police and returning
to DC. Why this is not your average three-death murder is explained
by Newsmax]

NEWSMAX: The same week
Cooper recanted, new information emerged about Mahoney's background
and her possible ties to the Monica Lewinsky case. Author David
M. Hoffman, who spent a year investigating Mahoney's murder,
tells Globe Magazine's Tom Kuncl that the Starbucks massacre
came just three days after Monica told Clinton she was going
to tell her parents about their relationship. According to Monica
Clinton reacted angrily, telling her, "It's a crime to threaten
the President." Hoffman's claim is corroborated by the Starr
Report. "Monica took the threat seriously," Hoffman
told Globe, "telling Linda Tripp that she feared for both
their lives if her affair with Clinton ever became public."
"I don't want to wind up like Caity Mahoney," Monica
is rumored to have told friends.

MARCH 1999

Police have charged a single
suspect in the 1997 gang-style slaying of three employees of
a Georgetown Starbucks. The murders have attracted attention
for a number of reasons:

-- Being killed in Georgetown
is considered more newsworthy by local media than being murdered
in less elegant parts of town.

-- In the contemporary
gestalt, a murder at Starbucks creates some of the same horror
as a murder in a church did in earlier times.

-- One of the victims,
Mary Caitrin Mahoney, was formerly an intern at the White House
and Monica Lewinsky was reported to have told Linda Tripp that
she didn't want to end up like her.

Police say the killings
were the result of a botched holdup. Certainly, the arrest came
after a long and botched investigation. It was initially hampered
by the decentralization of the homicide squad shortly before
the murders. Police sources complained that the move by then
Chief Larry Soulsby prevented the concentration of investigative
effort vital in the critical hours immediately after such a crime.
Soulsby later resigned in the wake of unrelated scandals. Subsequently
a police informant in the case was killed while serving as part
of a sting operation in a drug case.

The first detective on
the Starbucks scene called it "one of the most difficult
cases I've ever handled." The murders took place after closing.
It is not clear how the murderer(s) gained entrance. No money
was taken and no neighbors heard the ten shots that were fired.
As late as a day before the arrests, police were saying that
there were two gunmen involved, but now they believe that suspect
Carl Derek Cooper used two weapons in the attack.

If so, he did a lot of
damage in a short period, killing three people -- two with one
bullet each and hitting Mahoney five times. Although Mahoney
was reported to have been fleeing, she was struck in the face,
neck and chest. Police say that Cooper -- who has been previously
convicted of robbery, car theft and gun and drug violations --
used two guns in other crimes. The victims' pockets were picked
but a register and a safe filled with cash were left untouched.

An obituary in the Washington
Blade, reported that Mahoney, 24, had been a founder of the Baltimore
Lesbian Avengers. She founded a women's issues discussion group
at Towson State University, was a board member of the 31st Street
Bookstore in Baltimore, and worked on Bill Clinton's presidential
campaign as well as interning for the Clinton White House when
he was newly elected.

The lawyer for suspect
Cooper has complained that his client was questioned excessively
without legal counsel.

THE 1990s

THE
'FAIRY SHAKING' SCANDAL

MICHAEL
POWELL, SARI HORWITZ, TONI LOCY, WASHINGTON POST: November 30, 1997; A type of extortion scheme
known crudely as "fairy shaking" led to the arrest
of a D.C. police lieutenant and toppled the police chief of the
nation's capital. It's quite simple as extortion goes: Trail
a married man out of a gay sex club. Take his license plate number.
And later threaten to expose him unless he pays hush money. The
term "fairy shaking" needs no definition within certain
circles of the D.C. police department: A few rogue cops have
been doing it for years and getting away with it, several law
enforcement sources said. And it stands at the center of the
case against Lt. Jeffery S. Stowe, until recently the roommate
of D.C. Police Chief Larry D. Soulsby . . . It's common knowledge
that men go to the clubs that line a secluded block in Southeast
Washington -- clubs such as the Follies Theater and La Cage --
to relax, listen to music and have sex . . . In September, someone
was watching for the most vulnerable among them. The observer
noted which parked cars had baby seats and bore other evidence
of the straight, married life. And he wrote down the license
plate numbers. In the days that followed, three men who were
married with children received anonymous letters saying they
had been photographed at the gay sex clubs. The letters demanded
$10,000 cash from each in exchange for keeping their secrets.
This wasn't your typical, everyday extortionist, authorities
say. He knew the extortion game better than almost anyone in
town. He was, according to an arrest affidavit, Lt. Jeffery S.
Stowe, commander of a D.C. police unit that investigates extortion
and other crimes. Within two hours of Stowe's arrest last Tuesday,
his best friend on the force resigned: Chief Soulsby.

There is an epidemic
of strange celebrity deaths in Washington in the 1990s. Before
the Vince Foster death, the last high level suicide had been
Navy Secretary James Forrestal. Murders of well-known or well-placed
people were rare.

- Although his death was
officially labeled a suicide, many questions have arisen concerning
the passing of Admiral Mike Boorda, Chief of U.S. Naval operations

- In 1996, former CIA Director
William Colby died, allegedly in a boating accident, but the
facts do not adequately support this theory. For example, the
retired CIA head had left his home unlocked, his computer on,
and a partly eaten dinner on the table. Colby had recently become
an editor of Strategic Investment which was doing investigative
reporting on the Vince Foster death.

CHRISTOPHER RUDDY, PITTSBURGH,
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
- The body of "the Old Gray Man of the CIA," William
Colby, has been found in waters near his weekend home, but theories
about his demise continue to thrive. Colby, who served as CIA
director under Presidents Nixon and Ford, disappeared April 28.
Maryland authorities found his body Monday morning after it washed
ashore. This followed an intensive search of the Wimcoico River
near Colby's home in Rock Point, Md. Local police believe his
body was lost in the cloudy waters of the Wicomico while canoeing,
a favorite pastime of Colby's. . . Last week, The New York Post's
irreverent Page Six raised concerns about Colby's disappearance
and apparent death with an article headlined "Conspiracy
Crowd Snatches Colby." "The theory among conspiracy-minded,
cloak-and-dagger buffs is that Colby was assassinated so he wouldn't
spill any more agency secrets," the gossip page began. Agency
insiders reportedly resented Colby for talking to Congress about
the "family jewels" - supposed illegal operations the
agency conducted in the decades before Watergate. As a result,
Colby lost the support of agency insiders and the Ford administration.
President Ford fired Colby on Halloween 1975. Some theorists
point to the similar circumstances surrounding the 1978 death
of CIA deputy director John A. Paisley.

- There was also the little
noted but third highest ranking alleged suicide of the period:
John Millis, staff director of the Staff Director of the US House
Select Committee on Intelligence who was found dead of a gunshot
wound in a motel in Vienna, Virginia on June 3, 2000.

- That same month, a CIA
intelligence analyst, John Muskopf, 28, was killed while walking
with friends when a car drove up and someone inside shot him.

- In 1998, Sandy Hume,
a Washington journalist, committed suicide in a seedy suburban
motel. According to the Jerusalem Post, "the brilliant 28-year-old
journalist" killed himself, "as the story goes,"
over a homosexual affair with "a senior Republican [member
of Congress and] confirmed supporter of Israel."

- Investigative journalist
Danny Casolaro allegedly committed suicide in a bathtub of a
Martinsburg WV motel in 1991, but serious doubts have been raised
concerning the incident.

- Former White House intern
Mary Caitrin Mahoney was shot five times during the murder of
three Starbucks employees in an execution-style slaying. No money
was taken. An informant assisting police in case was murdered
when sent by DC police into a botched drug sting. The handling
of the 1997 Starbucks murder case continues to raise questions.
Carl Derek Cooper pleaded guilty to the crimes in April 2000
after being threatened with the death penalty by Janet Reno.

- Washington attorney Paul
Wilcher was found dead on a toilet in apartment. He was aid to
be investigating various scandals including the October Surprise,
the 1980 election campaign, drug and gun-running through Mena
and the Waco assault. Was planning a TV documentary on his findings.
He had delivered an extensive affidavit to Janet Reno three weeks
before his death.

- Carlos Ghigliotti: 42,
was found dead in his office just outside of Washington D.C.
on April 28, 2000. Ghigliotti, a thermal imaging analyst hired
by the House Government Reform Committee to review tape of the
Waco siege, had said he determined the FBI fired shots during
the incident. Ghigliotti said the tapes also confirm the Davidians
fired repeatedly at FBI agents during the assault, which ended
when flames raced through the compound.

FOUR CORNERS: The widow of a former top Australian
intelligence officer has broken her silence about the controversial
death of her husband in Washington two years ago. Sandra Jenkins
is demanding a full public inquiry into the events leading up
to the suicide of her husband Merv, whose body was found at his
Arlington, Virginia, home on June 13, 1999, his 48th birthday.
She believes her husband would be alive today if an Australian
Government investigation into allegations against him had been
better handled. Merv Jenkins was the Defence Intelligence Organisation's
senior man in Washington. A key part of his role was to liaise
and swap information with American intelligence agencies such
as the CIA. He came under investigation for allegedly passing
AUSTEO (Australian Eyes Only) material to allies. At that time,
early to mid 1999, the US was keen for intelligence on the Indonesia-controlled
militias running rampant in East Timor before the independence
vote. For Merv Jenkins, whose Washington civilian posting followed
an impeccable record of military service, the investigation came
as an extraordinary shock.

JOYCE CHIANG

EDDIE
DEAN, WASHINGTON CITY PAPER, JULY 30-AUG. 5, 1999: At the corner
of Connecticut and R Streets, [Joyce] Chiang hopped out of the
car. She said she was going to the Starbucks across the street.
She'd sworn off coffee and caffeinated drinks a few years before,
after her doctor warned her of an impending ulcer. What she wanted
was a cup of hot herbal tea to take the chill off during the
walk through Dupont Circle. She had plenty of time to make it
back for her 9 p.m. phone call. No problem. I'll be fine. Chiang
stood on the corner in front of La Tomate restaurant. The car
pulled away into the night. When a crime happens in Dupont Circle,
authorities know where to look to find evidence: nearby Rock
Creek. It has long been a favorite drop-off point for everything
from guns to bodies. But it was alongside the Anacostia where
a couple found Chiang's INS identification card the next day.
By then, Roger Chiang had figured that his sister had spent the
night at a friend's house-a common enough occurrence. When she
didn't come home Sunday night, though, he began to get worried.
Monday afternoon, he phoned her office: She hadn't reported to
work, and nobody had heard from her. It was one thing for Joyce
to spend the weekend away, but quite another for her to skip
a work day without calling. Her friends told Roger they had no
idea where she could be. The next day, he contacted authorities
to report his sister as missing. FULL
STORY

ALSO. . .

1996: Dick Morris, the chief political
strategist for President Clinton, resigns when the Star publishes
details of his relationship with Sherry Rowlands, a $200-an-hour
prostitute - including his foot fetish.

1992
- Senator Bob Packwood
is accused of harassing a large number of women

1990:
the House reprimands
Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, for - among other things
- using his political influence to fix parking tickets for an
intimate friend who was also a male prostitute and ran a homosexual
whorehouse out of the Frank residence. Other members who got
into trouble included Gary Studds of Massachusetts who seduced
a young male House page and was censured by the House. Dan Crane
of Illinois had sex with a female page, cried and begged forgiveness
on the floor of the House and lost his next election.

THE 1980s

ORGANIZED CRIME

It has been sometimes alleged
that J Edgar Hoover made a deal with the Italian Mafia to stay
out of DC, although Meyer Lansky did have a few confederates
including one of the best known restaurateurs in town. By the
late 1980s, however, things are changing, as reported in 1987
by Nancy Lewis in the Washington Post: "Prosecutors say
their first inkling that organized crime had discovered Washington
as an attractive place to do business came about 15 years ago
when an undercover investigation of the city's biggest-ever drug
gang led to the conviction here of two members of the Genovese
crime family. The 300-member D.C. gang was headed by Lawrence
W. (Slippery) Jackson, the son of a local minister, but the massive
amounts of heroin it put on the streets came from the New York
mob. Killings of rival gang members, a rarity in previous decades,
became frequent as drug chieftains, adopting Mafia ways, battled
for control of the city's street corners. Since then, slowly
but steadily, organized crime figures have been appearing around
town."

Wrote Lewis: "What's
going on? We never had these organized crime types in the past.
We had gangsters but they were our gangsters: Capitol Hill's
Joe Nesline, the Warring brothers from Foggy Bottom, Roger "Whitetop"
Simkins from Petworth, even Abe "Jewboy Dietz" Plisco
from Georgetown by way of Richmond. They and a handful of others
organized the criminal underworld here during Prohibition and
controlled it for decades afterward Now FBI agents and prosecutors
here talk about gangsters arriving from crime families in Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, New York and Sicily, of mob "soldiers"
and "associates," of huge drug shipments, of pizza
parlors vending cocaine along with the double-cheese and anchovies,
of enforcers who break legs and boast of the number of people
their friends have rubbed out. This is something new. In the
past, "organized crime considered Washington a small town
. . . and didn't want to fool with it," William Garber said
recently. He is an attorney who defended several local minor
crime figures and watched some of the more notorious trials when
he first opened his law practice in the 1950s. He added that
the conventional wisdom of the day was also that "organized
crime thought moving {into Washington} would just be pushing
the FBI too far."

In later years, however,
whatever Mafia influence there was seems to fade.

1987: Three weeks into his presidential
campaign, a news team stakes out Gary Hart's Washington house.
The team will report that Hart has had a rendezvous with a young
woman while his wife is away. A photo of the woman, Donna Rice,
sitting on his lap near a yacht named "Monkey Business,"
also surfaced and Hart's campaign was sunk.

1985
Duke Zeibert and
former Washington Bullets owner Arnold Heft plead guilty to gambling
charges involving an all-male social club in Rockville known
as the Progress Club.

1983
-GOP Illinois congressman
Dan Crane is censured for having sex with a female page; Democratic
Rep. Gary Studds is censured for having sex with a male one.

1980 - Rep. Dan Quayle goes on a Florida golfing vacation
with seven other men and Paula Parkinson -- an insurance lobbyist
who later posed nude for Playboy. Parkinson describes Quayle
as a husband on the make, but says she turned him down because
she was already having an affair with another congressman. Marilyn
Quayle says, "anybody who knows Dan Quayle knows he would
rather play golf than have sex."

THE 1970s

HERMAN TALMADGE

PATRICIA SULLIVAN, WASHINGTON POST - Betty Shingler Talmadge, 81,
a well-known Washington socialite and businesswoman who testified
against her newly divorced husband, the late Democratic Sen.
Herman E. Talmadge, during a Senate ethics inquiry in the late
1970s, died May 7 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at
Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. . . She later ran for Congress,
wrote two cookbooks and turned her home in Lovejoy, Ga., into
an invitation-only restaurant. . .

But it was her testimony,
under subpoena, before the Senate Ethics Committee in 1979 that
put her in headlines, after 22 years in Washington. Bundles of
$100 bills were kept in the pocket of an overcoat in the couple's
hall closet, she testified.

The money, unreported campaign
donations and reimbursements for nonexistent office expenses,
were used for the family's living costs. Mrs. Talmadge testified
that she took about a third of it, between $12,000 and $15,000,
in January 1974 after a fight with her then-husband. She said
she used it to supplement her $50-per-week allowance and turned
over the remaining 77 $100 bills from the stash to the committee.
She never knew the source of the funds, she said, declaring simply,
"It was a way of life.". . .

The divorce was one of
a spate on Capitol Hill. Hers caught the public's attention partly
for the brutal way she learned of it -- on a television news
show. She countersued, charging cruel treatment and "habitual
intoxication." The divorce cost her at least a million dollars,
according to contemporaneous accounts.

"As long as I rubbed
the hams and made some money and asked no questions, it was a
perfect little life. As soon as I started asking questions,"
she said, laughing, to a Post reporter in 1978, "I became
a little old menopausal, slightly crazy lady."

NY TIMES -
After her first cookbook appeared, The New York Times asked Mrs.
Talmadge how she had found the nerve to slaughter her first pig.
"Real easy, honey," she replied. "I just thought,
'You little male chauvinist, you,' and I went to it."

TPR - HERMAN TALMADGE was
the son of Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge who campaigned with
the pitch: "Y'all only got three friends in this world:
the Lord God Almighty, the Sears Roebuck catalog, and Eugene
Talmadge. And you can only vote for one of them."

POLICE
RAID THE HOME of
numbers boss Roger "Whitetop" Simkins, only to find
him bed ridden. They help him with his heart medicine while collecting
14 guns and gambling equipment.

In 1978
CIA official John A. Paisley is disappears. His empty boat is found near the
Chesapeake Bay. A body with a shot in the head is found and officials
declare it to be Paisley who had allegedly committed suicide.
His wife, however, says the body is the wrong height to be her
husband. He died of an apparent gunshot behind his ear. His body
had been weighted with diving belts. Since no blood was found
on the boat, authorities theorized Paisley first jumped into
the water and then fired the shot into his head. However, murder
was never ruled out in the case.

1976:
Elizabeth Ray says
she has been paid $14,000 a year in public funds by Ohio Rep.
Wayne Hays, chairman of the House Administration Committee. "I
can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone,"
Ray tells the Washington Post. "Supposedly, I'm on the oversight
committee," she said. "But I call it the Out-of-Sight
Committee." Hays is 64; Ray is 27.

1974:
Rep. Wilbur Mills
is stopped by Washington police at 2 am for erratic drving. He
is intoxicated and his face is scratched. A burlesque dancer
known as "Fanne Fox, the Argentine Firecracker," leaps
out of the car and dives into the Tidal Basin. Her rescue is
filmed by television reporter Larry Krebs. Mills is reelected
but loses his chairmanship.

1973
- John Theodore Brown aka
Jack Brown is indicted by a grand jury in New York. Brown flees
but his codefendants are found guilty and sentenced to 18 years
in prison. Brown is identified as an associate of the Tramunti
family and an important link between the Italian mafia and DC
black drug traffickers. According to Dan Moldea, Brown was the
source of supply in at least 15 DC drug cases:

In early
1973 a meeting was held
in Brookland to establish a black narcotics organization. Among
those reportedly involved were a prominent restaurateur, a city
official, and a banker, all familiar names in the city. Says
Moldea: "By late 1973 there were rumors that the mob had
decided to move back in, but the minorities were pretty solidly
in control."

THE 1960S

Joe
Nesline, who grew up around 6th & Mass NE, became the king
of local gambling, with three clubs and, in the late 1960s, a
wig business on F Street believed to be a front for gambling
and cocaine trafficking. He reportedly runs casinos in Cuba for
Meyer Lansky and worked with the Genovese family in Europe. MORE ON NESLINE

1969 In the summer,
several persons involved in criminal activity meet at various
locations to discuss establishing a formal organization to control
the distribution of narcotics in the DC area. The operation is
modeled after La Cosa Nostra and members start to refer to it
as the 'Black Mafia.' The total membership is between 50 and
75 and crimes will include extortion, murder, robbery and protection.
Says crime expert Dan Moldea, "Persons involved in illegal
or quasi-legal activities were asked to donate a specified amount
of money to the group. In return for this money, the person was
entitled to some form of protection in their day-to-day operations.
Their employees would not be robbed by members of their organization;
if their employees were robbed by non-members, the robbers were
taken care of by the head group; they wanted any person disciplined,
the head group arranged for this. If any arguments arose, or
disputes occurred between Black Mafia members and investors,
the arguments were mediated by the head group." Joe Nesline
is the reported contact with the New York mob.

THE
1950s

BOB MARTIN & DUKE ZIEBERT

GAMBLER'S
BOOK - For all
times, he is The Man. Sonny Reizner once called him, the Bobby
Jones-Babe Ruth-Man O'War of the oddsmaking business. He exerted
the single greatest influence on sports betting for a quarter
of a century and provided the foundation for the industry today.
. . His legendary self-effacing humor aside, Martin did what
he did best for years in Las Vegas: set the numbers, a service
we all but take for granted in this computer age. It wasn't always
so. This brilliant, modest, funny, funny man paved the way.

Martin first plied his
trade by booking six-hit bets at Thomas Jefferson High School
in East New York in Brooklyn, NY (pick three major league baseball
players to get six hits cumulatively at 10-1 odds, later 6-1)
graduating into football parlay cards like those issued by Gorham
Press of Minneapolis fame. Martin remembers that, "I guess
I was about 12 years old when I began making three-and four-team
parlays, always dogs. I hit a few, running up a $600 bankroll.
Sometimes I'd bet $5, a lot of money in the depression. I could
have bought a whole block. . . Martin paid his way through New
York University by selling parlay cards at a 25 percent commission
while studying journalism and combined his knack for gambling
by using out-of-town newspapers to get the inside "dope"
on college basketball teams. . .

Martin quickly developed
a reputation as a man who knew things, a "wise guy."
He did this by combing his out-of-town papers for information,
and collecting files on every player and sport. He made out all
right until the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandals,
when he was wiped out by those in on the fixes.

He moved to Washington,
D.C. in 1952, recalling, "A bookmaker there hired me to
advise him on fighters..."The bookmaker was Julius Silverman
and Martin was dead broke. He made his living in D.C., working
out of a building near the old State Department, surviving there
until 1959 when Martin, Silverman and Meyer "Nutsy"
Schwartz were arrested in the Foggy Bottom row house. Their organization
had become the number one boxing book in the country when Martin
and his two partners were arrested. They were each given 2 1/2
to 5 years in prison. Martin notes, "I failed to procure
diplomatic immunity." His shop shut the doors in 1962 with
Robert Kennedy's war on gambling in full swing.

Duke Ziebert, the famed
Washington restaurateur came to Martin's aid. Ziebert hired Edward
Bennett Williams, renowned trial lawyer and later owner of the
Washington Redskins, to take the case all the way to the Supreme
Court, using an invasion of privacy defense. Bennett bet Martin
he'd sweep the judges, 9-0 in the Silverman vs. United States
landmark case. Martin bet him 10-1 he wouldn't. Martin was quite
happy to pay him the $1,000 when each man was forced to pay a
$5,000 fine but he escaped jail time after surveillance used
to gather evidence was ruled illegal and a violation of the defendants'
Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Martin left Washington
and moved around the country, first to Miami, then back to Washington.
He says, "I got into a little trouble in Houston back in
the early 60s. They claimed I was bookmaking I thought I was
just having fun. A difference of opinion, I guess." Seeking
greener pastures, he eventually moved west in 1963 to become
the official oddsmaker at Harry Gordon's Churchill Downs Race
and Sports Book in Las Vegas in 1967.

1952: Various local mobsters are called
before the Senate District Subcommittee including Emmett Waring,
numbers banker Abe Plisco, Roger "Whitetop" Simkins,
who ran the numbers in downtown. Part of the testimony reveals
the use of "ice," or payoffs, to local cops. Simkins
refuses to identify himself on the grounds that it might incriminate
him.

THE 1920s and 1930s

"The Capital Underworld,"
1932: "Compared
with New York and Chicago, Washington is not a wicked city. It
experiences brief flashes of gang warfare which the local press
tries to play up as important. It revels in the murder mysteries
of Mary Baker, Navy Department clerk, and of Virginia McPherson,
daughter-in-law of the assistant to the Secretary of War. It
is baffled by the robbery of the Salvadorian Legation, accomplished
as a larger consignment of Scotch whisky had arrived and was
piled up in the rear garden. And it is horrified at the nocturnal
operations of more than a hundred Negro degenerates who swooped
down regularly upon the encamped Bonus Army as soon as it became
dark. Compared with the big-time racketeering of New York and
Chicago all of this probably is puerile and petty, but it plays
an important and influential part in the life of the nation's
capital. Furthermore, Washington's underworld has two or three
distinctions of which in a modest sort of way it can really boast.
One of these is the ease of securing immunity. The capital may
witness few crimes, but in few cases is the culprit ever brought
to justice. Another distinction is the complete and unrestrained
freedom of the neighboring counties of Maryland, where an amazing
White Slave traffic, operating through a chain of tea houses,
furnishes recreation to capital residents. Finally, Washington
probably boasts more small, independent bootleggers per capita
than any other city in the country and has established a unique
and universal system of liquor distribution. . . . Police occasionally
interrupt these too-obvious law-breakers, but the great rank
and file of bootleggers and petty criminals who ply their trade
in the nation's capital enjoy an immunity almost unsurpassed
even in New York and Chicago. This is due to three factors. The
first is the influence of Henry Mencken's Free State of Maryland,
which surrounds the District of Columbia on three sides. The
second is the natural laziness of the capital police. The third
is the prestige and pull exercised by so large a number of those
enjoying official status, a factor which makes convictions difficult
and disrupts police morale."

Izzy Einstein, the famous
prohibition agent, keeps a record of how long it takes to get
a drink in various cities. DC comes out badly. Not only does
it take an hour (as opposed to 11 minutes in Pittsburgh and 17
in Atlanta) but he has to ask directions from a cop.

Emmitt "Little
Man" Warring and
his brothers Leo Paul and Charles "Rags" run the numbers
in the late 1930s. According to a Washington Post article by
Nancy Lewis [3/1/87], "Emmitt, the ninth of 10 children
born to a Foggy Bottom barrel maker and his Irish immigrant wife,
was the leader of the brothers' numbers business. Before then,
in Prohibition, Warring had run the Washington area's version
of "Thunder Road," bringing rye and corn whiskey from
Prince George's County and southern Maryland stills to the city's
"liquor drops," using Georgetown teen-agers who drove
"high-powered touring cars" for $50 to $100 a trip.
The Warrings' shift from illegal booze to illegal numbers --
which they preferred to call the "commission brokerage business"
-- was soon bringing in $2 million a year, and Emmitt's "Little
Man" moniker described only his 5-foot 4 1/2 inch stature
. . . The brothers operated out of a third-floor room at 2423
Pennsylvania Ave. NW, but their domain was all of Georgetown
and Foggy Bottom, and by 1936 they had at least 56 employees
- the number listed on their income tax returns." The brothers
are indicted on tax evasion charges in 1938, but the trial ends
in a hung jury. The second trial ends in a mistrial after the
judge reports that Emmitt Warring has offered a juror $600 and
given whiskey to a US Marshal to pass to the jury. The third
trial ends after two months, when all three brothers pleaded
guilty. The business keeps on and is earning at least $7.5 million
a year by the late 1940s.

Sam Smith, Progressive
Review - There
was a club on the edge of town owned by Jimmy LaFontaine. It
was a club with standards, as Gaillard Hunt described in a Prohibition
era novel:

Couldn't sit here all
night, tho. Have to do something, Do the usual thing -- the best
thing. Whatever happens eleven and ten is still twenty-one and
aces still beat kings.

He slipped the bottle
into his coat pocket and stood out in the street. Far down the
street a taxi was coming. It slowed down as it got closer, then
stopped. He got in and said, "Jimmy Lafontaine's."

About the time the taxi
turned into Bladensburg road the whisky began to hit him. It
made him less mad and the knot in his belly began to loosen,
By the time they got to the place he was feeling almost good.

The doorman looked at
him sharply, then shook his head. Peter tried to argue with him,
but he only said, "You know the house rules. No one been
drinking can get in." He whistled to the taxi which was
loitering in the drive and shut the door.

Peter got back in the
taxi and. said, "Son of a. bitch. That guy's idea of a drunk
is same as Volstead's. Let's go back to town."

The doorman was as famous
as LaFontaine, as Shirley Povich described in a 1989 Washington
Post article:

In the 1920s and '30s
there were also in Washington indoor sports such as dice-throwing,
poker games, blackjack and track odds on the races everywhere.
One temple of chance, located in Bladensburg, just across the
District line, was known as "Jimmy's;" it was impeccably
conducted by the legendary Jimmy LaFontaine, who stood for no
nonsense by anybody and was proud of a clientele that included
many stylish Washington names.

At Jimmy's a huge fellow
named Josh Licarione frisked everybody at the door to help keep
the peace. Licarione, it seems, had played football for a time
at George Washington University. The story goes that after an
especially heroic victory at Griffith Stadium, the president
of GW was overjoyed enough to visit the team in the locker room
and not only praised the gladiators but continued told them,
"Any of you boys who are in the vicinity of my office, come
in and pass the time of day with me."

That was when Licarione
said, "By the way, where is that school of yours?"

Povich was wrong about
one thing: the club wasnt over the city line; it was on
it. I had sometimes heard that one advantage of this was that
if, for example, a raid were pending from the Maryland side,
LaFontaine would simply lock the Maryland gates, giving his customers
time to evacuate through the DC entrance. But Tom Kelly, who
covered the beat, tells me it wasnt as complicated: if
there were reports of illegal activities, the called police department
would simply say (with at least 50% certainty) that it wasnt
in their jurisdiction.

A Washingtonian who grew
up in Brookland remembers hearing about the club and its ten
to twelve foot wooden walls. He says a relative who once one
a lot of money at the club was driven home by Fontaine's security
people to make sure he made it safely.

THE 19TH CENTURY CITY

In 1863 General Meade replaced General
Hooker three days before the Battle of Gettysburg. Meade will
only have a fort named after him, while Hooker lends his name
to a whole synonym. The following is from a report by the Smithsonian
Institution on archeological work done near the site of the National
Museum of the American Indian:

"With the outbreak
of the Civil War in 1861, the sleepy town of Washington was dramatically
transformed as its population swelled with newcomers. The new
arrivals included many men who had signed up to fight for the
Union. Throughout the war, thousands of soldiers were encamped
throughout the city, either awaiting orders to fight, manning
forts to protect the Union capital from Rebel attack, or languishing
from disease or wounds in hospitals throughout the city. Along
with the soldiers came government bureaucrats, freed and escaped
slaves, businessmen, salesmen, and con men, as well as the camp
followers and prostitutes who sought to profit from the increased
demand for their services. The Army's provost marshal, who kept
a list of the city's bawdy houses during the war ostensibly to
keep them under surveillance, concluded that there were 450 registered
houses in Washington in 1862. While some prostitutes worked in
brothels, the majority probably plied their trade as streetwalkers.
By 1863, the Evening Star newspaper estimated that Washington
had about 5,000 prostitutes . . . When the war came to a close,
Washington remained overcrowded, and its roads, parks, and the
canal were in shambles as a result of four years of overuse and
neglect. The area between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Mall, which
is presently occupied by the Federal Triangle complex, had become
an infamous crime-ridden neighborhood rife with the stench of
the nearby canal, which had become little more than an open sewer.
Known for its rampant prostitution, the area was widely referred
to as Hooker's Division, a wry double entendre. Indeed many of
its occupants were "hookers," a term for prostitutes
used since the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, the region
was reported to have been visited frequently by the troops in
Union General Joseph Hooker's division, which was encamped nearby."
MORE

1888: Tolls
are lifted on the Aqueduct Bridge, providing easier access for
Geogetowners to the disreputable pleasures of Rosslyn which included
saloons, prostitution, gambling, chicken and bulldog fights,
and two race tracks. Eventually, a reform movement will force
these establishments out of Rosslyn, some of them moving to Georgetown.
Jimmy LeFontaine, who ran a gambling house in Rosslyn becomes
a prominent Georgetown citizen. Another waterfront merchant is
said to control the local numbers.

NOTABLE FACTS

Almost half of all prostitutes
in DC have been found to be HIV-positive.

The Federal Triangle -
bordered by Pennsylvania Ave., Constitution Ave., and 15th St
- used to be known as "Murder Bay," the most notorious
neighborhood in DC. It was later called "Hooker's Division"
after the Civil War general responsible for the area.

In the Capitol Rotunda
is a fresco called "The Apotheosis of Washington,"
painted by Constantine Brumidi. It features 13 angels welcoming
George Washington into heaven. The angels were alleged modeled
on 13 local prostitutes.

NATIONAL ENQUIRER - A
book reveals startling new details about 28-year-old Salvadoran
immigrant Ingmar Guandique, who now awaits trial for Chandra's
murder.

Chandra was just 24 when she disappeared
on May 1, 2001. Her body was found a year later in D.C.'s Rock
Creek Park.

The hunt for her killer gripped America
- fueled by the revelation that she'd been having a secret affair
with former California Congressman Gary Condit. But it wasn't
until nearly eight years after the murder that illegal alien
Guandique was indicted in the pretty young woman's slaying. He
is already serving a 10-year sentence for brutal knife attacks
on two women in the same park.

"Detectives are confident Guandique
is the guy - there is new forensic evidence that directly links
him to Chandra's murder," said former Washington, D.C.,
homicide detective Rod Wheeler, who consulted on the case.

The book also provides new details about
the married ex-congressman caught up in the case. While Gary
Condit was never named a suspect by police, he came under intense
media scrutiny and the revelation of the affair led to his loss
in his bid for re-election in 2002.

The authors claim that the FBI did tests
on Chandra's underwear and found Condit's DNA.

But when the focus of the investigation
switched to Guandique, already jailed for the two other vicious
knife attacks, detectives found a photo of Chandra - ripped from
a magazine - in his cell and the chilling tattoo on his chest.

The detectives "noted the large tattoo
of a naked woman with long black hair - and the similarities
to Chandra," says a source.

"They asked if that was 'some sort
of souvenir' that reminded him of the murder. He smirked, and
giggled, but didn't answer."

2009

Washington Post -
D.C. police and prosecutors said that they will charge a 27-year-old
Salvadoran man with first-degree murder in the killing of Chandra
Levy nearly eight years ago during a sexual assault along a desolate
hiking trail deep in Rock Creek Park. Saying they had solved
a case that transfixed the nation, authorities issued an arrest
warrant for Ingmar Guandique, who is serving a 10-year prison
sentence for attacking two other women at knifepoint in the park
around the time the 24-year-old federal government intern disappeared.
. .

According to the affidavit, on May 1, 2001,
the day Levy disappeared, another young woman walking in the
park was accosted by a Hispanic man. The woman said she ran away
and later left the country on a preplanned trip. A year later,
still living abroad, she saw a photograph of Guandique in a newspaper
when his name first surfaced as a possible suspect in the Levy
case. The affidavit says the woman recognized him as the man
she saw in the park the day Levy disappeared. . .

Late last year, detectives interviewed
key witnesses, including one who said Guandique had written letters
claiming responsibility for the killing. The witness became nervous
and later during a phone conversation questioned Guandique about
the alleged admission. "During this recorded conversation
Guandique acknowledged that he had told [the witness] about the
'girl who's dead,' " the police affidavit said.

Another witness told police in November
that he had known Guandique for many years and that Guandique
boasted that he was a member of the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha,
or MS-13. He allegedly said that he was known in the gang as
"Chuckie" -- after a demonic doll from a series of
horror movies -- because he had a reputation for "killing
and chopping up people." Guandique allegedly told the witness
that he had raped many women after lying in wait near a dirt
path in the park, that he would tie them up and then sexually
assault them. . .

Another witness, identified as "W11,"
told police that Guandique confessed to killing Levy, but some
of the details were different. . .

Levy Case

Levy had looked up the National Park Service
headquarters - aka the Klingle Mansion - on the Internet as one
of her last known acts in her Dupont Circle apartment. Her body
was found about a mile north of the mansion, which is about three
miles from her apartment.

Levy's apartment was about four blocks
from the former home of Joyce Chaing who had previously been
found murdered in federal parkland in the capital. Chaing was
last seen on an urban street corner in Dupont Circle.

Police did not search Levy's apartment
for nine days.

Her body was found about three weeks after
her disappearance by a man walking his dog despite an extensive
police search of the area nearby. They claimed they had not searched
the part where the body was discovered because of its remoteness.

The sexual attacks in that area of Rock
Creek Park stopped after Guandique was arrested.

MIKE WISE, SF CHRONICLE, 2007 - Although he is no longer an FBI
agent, Brad Garrett still visits the steep, wooded hillside in
a Washington, D.C., park where the skeletal remains of Chandra
Levy, a federal intern from Modesto, Calif., were found five
years ago this week, a year after she disappeared.

No one has been charged
in the killing of the 24-year-old, whose disappearance generated
enormous publicity after authorities revealed that she had been
having a relationship with her married hometown congressman,
Gary Condit. The Democrat was defeated in 2002 by his former
aide, Dennis Cardoza.

"The key to cold cases
is being creative," Garrett, a private investigator and
a consultant to ABC News, said in a phone interview. Until his
mandatory retirement last year at the age of 58, Garrett was
a high-profile agent who had solved some of the bureau's most
intractable cases -- but not the Levy slaying.

"I go to Rock Creek
Park sometimes, yeah, and go over the crime scene, over and over
again," he said. "What have I missed? The whole atmospherics
is very important. It's very frustrating that it's not resolved.
It's troubling."

On May 1, 2001, Levy used
her computer in her apartment in the Dupont Circle area of northwest
Washington to look up the National Park Service headquarters
in Rock Creek Park, about a mile distant. She had recently completed
an internship at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and planned to return
to Modesto, according to her mother, Susan Levy. Friends and
family became alarmed when Levy was not heard from, and a search
began. It wasn't until a year and three weeks later, on May 22,
2002, that her remains were found in the 1,700-acre park. . .

The Washington Metropolitan
Police Department lists the death as one of 6,000 cold cases.
Since the intern's disappearance, the case has been investigated
by Detective Ralph Durant, a 37-year veteran of the department.
In a phone interview, Durant said, "There are still persons
of interest, yes, but we can't tell you who they are. We still
get phone calls and e-mails.". . .

Initially, media attention
focused on Condit, the Modesto lawmaker 30 years Levy's senior.
Police have said repeatedly that they do not consider him a suspect.
In the years since, Condit and his family have been embroiled
in several lawsuits. He and his wife, Carolyn, sued American
Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, claiming they
had been defamed by the supermarket tabloid. The suits were settled.
No terms were disclosed. Condit also settled a suit against Vanity
Fair magazine columnist Dominick Dunne.

2002

ALLAN LENGEL, SARI HORWITZ WASHINGTON POST - Joe McCann, a private investigator
who found one of Chandra Levy's leg bones in Rock Creek Park
this month, was happy to provide D.C. police detectives with
details of the discovery. But during an interview at police headquarters,
the detectives asked McCann if he would submit to a polygraph
test and seemed to question the veracity of his story, according
to sources familiar with the incident. McCann, a former D.C.
homicide detective hired by the Levy family's attorney, was insulted
by the request -- and declined. Yesterday, D.C. Police Chief
Charles H. Ramsey said it is standard procedure in major cases
to ask witnesses with crucial information to take a polygraph
. . . But former law enforcement officials who know McCann said
the polygraph request was insulting and a possible way to divert
attention from the real question: Why didn't D.C. police find
the bone during an earlier search of that section of the park?
"It's not routine" to ask for a polygraph in instances
such as McCann's, said defense lawyer Louis H. Hennessey, who
headed the D.C. police homicide unit in the mid-1990s. "I
think they're looking like fools and they're trying to cast aspersions
on other people."

ROLL CALL
- D.C. Metropolitan
Police Department officials investigating the death of Washington
intern Chandra Levy have interviewed a man serving a 10-year
prison sentence for attacking two women in Rock Creek Park last
year. D.C. Metro Police investigators have "talked to"
Ingmar Guandeque, who was arrested in July 2001 after attacking
two females (one in May and one in July) who were jogging along
the Broad Branch trail in Rock Creek Park . . . A second official
close to the Levy investigation said that while Guandeque was
interviewed after Levy's disappearance last year, investigators
are now taking a closer look at him since the intern's body was
discovered. "Clearly there are some coincidences and links
-- just because of the proximity of where he [committed his crimes],"
said a source close to the investigation.

. . . The first attack
occurred in mid-May 2001, at 6:30 p.m., about two weeks after
Levy disappeared. In that case, Guandeque came upon an unnamed
female jogger, attacking her from behind while brandishing a
knife. According to a press release issued Feb. 8 by the office
of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, the victim
reported that Guandeque grabbed her around the neck and pulled
her to the ground, where her portable radio fell off. She also
reported that Guandeque bit her when she tried to push him away.
Guandeque fled the scene of the crime, leaving the radio beside
his victim.

On July 1, 2001, he attacked
another female jogger at approximately 7:30 p.m., running up
behind her as she reached the crest of a hill and grabbing her
from behind. The woman struggled, and when Guandeque loosened
his grip on her she managed to get away and report the incident
to the U.S. Park Police, who located Guandeque and arrested him.

THERE REMAIN VARIOUS possibilities.
For example, if, as some have alleged, there is a tie - either
direct or coincidental - between this case and powerful individuals
and their activities, there is a considerable probability that
the case will never be solved or that a straw perpetrator will
be charged with the crime. For example, some stories have suggested
a connection with an S&M sex ring in which a number of well-known
individuals are believed to have participated. As USA Today's
Tom Sequeri put it delicately, there are "dark aspects of
this story that we can't report yet." This is the sort of
thing that Washington is highly skilled at covering up and in
this case there may be more than adequate motive, especially
since the DC police were badly embarrassed in 1997 by revelations
of the practice of "fairy shaking," in which a cop
followed a married man out of a gay sex club, got his license
plate number, and later threatened to expose him unless he paid
hush money . . . There also continue to be doubts about the handling
of the last high profile DC murder, the Starbucks case in which
the alleged perp confessed and then recanted. Added to the curiosities
about the case was the fact that of all the 301 slayings that
took place in DC in 1997, only these three killings attracted
the attention not only of the FBI but of Attorney General Reno
herself. Reno overruled her own US Attorney and called for the
death penalty in the case. STARBUCKS
CASE

EARLY RETURNS SUGGEST some
confusion over whether the body was buried or not. The two Washington
dailies divided on this crucial question:

WASHINGTON POST - Detectives believe the body was not in any kind
of grave, but was simply left on the forest floor, where dirt
and leaves eventually covered it, said law enforcement sources
who spoke on condition that they not be identified. Police found
"less of the body than more," they said, possibly because
of animals.

WASHINGTON TIMES - Even before the dental match was made, investigators
felt strongly they had found the missing former intern: One of
the items found near the remains was a gold ring engraved with
the initials "C.L." One law-enforcement source told
The Washington Times the ring was found in a shallow grave with
some of the remains. "The shallow grave would take away
the self-inflicted wound theory," the source said.

OTHER ISSUES: The Washington
Post reports, "The skull, which was not complete, was cracked,
although the cause was unclear. All the bones that were discovered
were found within five yards of the skull." Why was the
skull cracked? . . . The just jogging theory is countered by
the terrain. Writes the Washington Times: "Tansy Blumer,
59, who lives on Davenport Road about 100 yards west of where
the body was found, said the two-lane, winding road is not a
typical jogging path. 'There are no sidewalks or shoulders,'
she said. 'It's not a big jogging area. You can walk on park
trails, but they are difficult and not well-known trails, and
they are definitely not for running.'"

THE WEEKLY GLOBE reports
charges by James Robinson - attorney for one of Gary Condit's
ex-lovers - that Chandra Levy was killed on orders from two well
known politicians - a governor and a former presidential candidate
- who belonged to an alternative sex ring. Robinson alleges that
"this story is bigger than Watergate" and that Levy
was killed because she was ready to blow the whistle on the sex
club. The Globe offers no evidence to support Robinson's claim.

2001

ALLAN LENGEL AND PETULA
DVORAK, WASHINGTON POST: D.C. police escalated their dispute
with Rep. Gary A. Condit and his attorney, dismissing the results
of a privately administered polygraph as having "no investigative
value" and suggesting that they still may need to talk to
the congressman about his relationship with missing intern Chandra
Levy. The FBI has reviewed the results of Condit's polygraph
but was unable to match specific questions to the graphs that
show the congressman's reaction, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey
said in an interview. The results were presented in such a fashion
that analysts had "no way of telling with certainty the
results of each question," Ramsey said.

ONE OF THE LEADS being
investigated in the Chandra Levy case is that Levy was murdered
by a professional hit man involved in the local gay S&M scene.
Whether or not this proves to be the case, the mere possibility
has created unusual problems on Capitol Hill and for the DC police.
We hear that some big names on the Hill are extremely nervous
at the moment - not because of the Levy mystery itself but because
what such a solution might reveal. The MPD could also face possible
blowback because of its involvement a few years back in a major
gay blackmail scandal, perhaps involving some of the same players.

Make no mistake about it.
This is a big case. One classic solution would be to declare
it a suicide or to find someone - such as a criminal already
facing a murder rap - to take the fall as part of a plea bargain.
For example, at least two fairly recent alleged suicides quickly
fell down the memory hole - those involving Sandy Hume and House
Intelligence Committee staff director John Millis - despite reasonable
unanswered questions. And, of course, there remains the big one:
the unsolved death of Vince Foster.

WILLIAM WALKER, TORONTO
STAR: Washington police also revealed they are investigating
the possibility 24-year-old Chandra Levy may have been slain
by a professional killer skilled in the disposal of bodies .
. . Levy's purse, wallet, personal identification and credit
cards were all left in her apartment, along with a laptop computer
and her packed bags prepared for a return trip home to attend
her University of Southern California graduation ceremony. All
that was missing from her apartment were her keys. Police found
no signs of a struggle or forced entry and nothing was stolen.
[Chief Charles] Ramsey confirmed that although Levy was last
seen April 30, a search of her laptop computer revealed that
she was on the Internet visiting travel Web sites the next day,
on May 1, for about three hours up until 1 p.m. . . . [Levy family
lawyer] Martin said his own investigation, conducted on behalf
of the Levy family by two retired Washington homicide detectives,
indicates the young woman went to meet someone she knew. ``For
some reason, Chandra appears to have been lured, called, or brought
out of the apartment expecting to return,'' Martin said.

JAMES RISEN & RAYMOND
BONNER, NY TIMES: Washington police investigating the disappearance
of the government intern Chandra Ann Levy have found no evidence
that would link her case to other recent missing-person cases
involving young women in the capital, law enforcement officials
said today. In particular, investigators for the Metropolitan
Police Department have reviewed two cases involving women whose
bodies were recovered in the Washington area, Joyce Chiang and
Christine M. Mirzayan. Ms. Chiang, a 28-year-old lawyer at the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, disappeared in January
1999, after last being seen in the Dupont Circle area, a few
blocks from where Ms. Levy, 24, lived. Her body was discovered
three months later on the Virginia side of the Potomac River,
but the authorities were never able to determine the cause of
death. Ms. Mirzayan, a 28-year-old intern at the National Research
Council in Washington, disappeared on Aug. 1, 1998. Her body
was found in a wooded area near Georgetown University the next
day. Her head had been crushed. No one has been arrested in either
case. There are some striking similarities between those cases
and the Levy one. All three women were Californians in their
20's and had similar physical characteristics. Like Ms. Levy,
Ms. Mirzayan was an intern, while Ms. Chiang lived in the same
neighborhood as Ms. Levy. MORE

AS WE HAVE NOTED, the Chandra
Levy disappearance case may be far more complicated that it first
appeared. For example, there are now possible ties to a local
gay S&M group. The story is being kept under wraps by news
media lawyers - Newsweek and the Village Voice have both spiked
articles - but this much can be told: A former Republican congressman
wrote a lurid account for Newsmax, allegedly based on knowledgeable
sources, that claimed Levy to have been the victim of a gay prostitute
who has since returned to his native country. Newsmax quickly
removed the story, but it has been the subject of intense media
investigation since.

The Levy case has also
revived interest in another woman's disappearance two years ago,
not far from Levy's apartment. The Starbucks mentioned below,
incidentally, is in the same block and across the street from
the Review's long-time former office. La Tomate serves as the
Review's conference room. The site is also near one of the numerous
locations where Vince Foster case witness Patrick Knowlton found
himself under overt surveillance - a technique used by intelligence
agencies for intimidation - in the aftermath of his visit to
Ft. Marcy Park.

TIMOTHY J. BURGER, NY DAILY
NEWS: The Chandra Levy case isn't the first brush with controversy
for the Condit boys. Rep. Gary Condit's two brothers, one a cop
and one a convicted drug addict, have both had their share of
problems. Sgt. Burl Condit, 55, was one of several officers who
were caught up in a 1999 scandal involving the improper sale
of old guns belonging to the Modesto Police Department. The officers
were allowed to take one gun each under the condition they would
eventually pay for them. Condit, however, took nine and there
was no record he ever paid for them, according to a department
investigation. Condit was never charged with wrongdoing. He later
returned four of the guns, but said he no longer owned the other
five weapons, The Modesto Bee reported . . . Burl Condit also
was sued last year by a credit agency over a $2,300 cell phone
bill and was ordered to pay, court records show. The youngest
Condit brother, Darrell, 49, - labeled a drug addict by a judge
in 1984 - has been in and out of jail since a 1979 forgery conviction
in the Condits' hometown of Tulsa, Okla., files show. He has
since been nabbed on charges including theft, DUI, heroin and
psilocybin possession and, in 1999 for smoking pot - while in
jail. He also was charged with assaulting Modesto deputies in
1989 with a hammer handle. MORE